Eric Isaacs becomes director of Argonne National Laboratory this month, where he expects to refocus the lab on its core strengths in x rays, high-performance computing, materials, chemistry, and energy. Isaacs went to Argonne in 2003 to head the Center for Nanoscale Materials, one of five nanotechnology user facilities located at US Department of Energy labs. He will retain his appointment as a professor of physics at the University of Chicago, which has managed ANL for the DOE and its predecessors since the lab’s inception during World War II.
Prior to Argonne, Isaacs spent 15 years at Bell Labs, first as a postdoc, eventually as director of the materials physics research department, and later head of the semiconductor physics department. Isaacs sees the national labs as heirs to Bell Labs’ former role as an innovation hub: Both places hired the best scientists and engineers, and both invested in high-risk basic...
