Melissa Summers is the interim Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences. In this role, she oversees a broad portfolio spanning chemical sciences, materials sciences, and the Molecular Foundry and Advanced Light Source user facilities, with strong connections to universities, industry, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
Previously, Melissa held several leadership roles at Berkeley Lab, including serving as ESA Deputy, where she helped shape and implement the Area’s scientific strategy, policies, and operations. She also previously served as Program Development Coordinator for ESA and as Carbon Cycle 2.0 program manager in the Laboratory Directorate. Earlier in her career, she was a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the National Science Foundation.
She holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in materials science at Stanford University.
As Interim Area Deputy for Operations for the Energy Sciences Area (ESA), Orlando Casiano leads operational functions across the Area and supports coordination with its scientific divisions.
Orlando currently serves as Area Deputy Director of Operations for the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area. He previously held leadership roles at Sandia National Laboratories and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He holds an MBA in management and a bachelor’s degree in business administration and accounting, and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).
ESA Communications Lead Alison Hatt manages strategic communications functions of the ESA Office, in collaboration with Area leadership and Berkeley Lab’s Strategic Communications Office, among others. Alison holds a B.S. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Materials. Her previous Lab positions include User Program Director at the Molecular Foundry and Communications Specialist in the Materials Sciences Division. She previously worked at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL) user facility and as a freelance science writer and consultant.
ESA's Senior Administrator, Anastasia Palmer, holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from National University. Her past roles at Berkeley Lab included Administrator and Administrative Assistant for the Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics Division. Before joining the Lab, Anastasia held impactful roles at Meta and Ernst & Young, where she specialized in operations, project coordination, and systems management.
Dimitri Argyriou is an internationally recognized condensed matter physicist who utilizes neutrons and X-rays to understand emergent behavior in complex oxides and novel superconductors. He has worked across scientific areas that include solid state chemistry, crystal growth and theory. He joined the lab from the European Spallation Source where he was Director of Science. Argyriou received his Ph.D. and B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia and his habilitation from Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule, Aachen, Germany. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a recipient of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Prize for his work on multiferroics.
Polly Arnold is a renowned heavy-element chemist who joined Berkeley Lab from the University of Edinburgh where she was the Crum Brown Chair of Chemistry. She is also a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on advancing our understanding of the bonding and reactivity of heavy elements, the elements of the f-block of the periodic table. Among her many awards and honors, Arnold is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was awarded the 2012 Rosalind Franklin Award and Order of the British Empire in 2017 for her outstanding contributions to chemistry and women in STEM.
Peter Fischer received his Ph.D. in Physics (Dr.rer.nat.) from the Technical University in Munich, Germany in 1993 on pioneering work with X-ray magnetic circular dichroism in rare earth systems. Since 2004 he has been with the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley CA. He is a Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator in the Non-Equilibrium Magnetic Materials Program. His research program is focused on the use of polarized synchrotron radiation for the study of fundamental problems in magnetism.
Ashfia Huq is a materials scientist specializing in X-ray and neutron powder diffraction to study energy storage materials, catalysts, and strongly correlated electron systems. She joined the Molecular Foundry from Sandia National Laboratories, where she managed the Materials Physics Department and served on the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee. Huq previously spent 13 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, leading the construction of the POWGEN powder diffraction beamline and managed a diffraction group overseeing four neutron instrument teams. She holds a Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from Stony Brook University and a BA in Physics and Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College.
