James Symons

Biography

Berkeley Lab’s Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences champions the highly-accomplished research divisions in accelerator and fusion research, engineering, nuclear science, and physics. James Symons received his D.Phil from Oxford University, where he studied nuclear structure, and began his career at Berkeley Lab in 1977 as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Since that time, he has held scientific research and management roles, and also currently serves as the Director of the Nuclear Science Division. His research interests are in experimental nuclear physics, including nuclear structure and relativistic heavy ion collisions. As Division Director, he oversees the 88-inch Cyclotron. He is a member of the STAR (Solenoid Tracker at RHIC) experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), designed to study particle production at temperatures and densities similar to that found during the early universe. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and has served on numerous national and international panels, including the Department of Energy/National Science Foundation Nuclear Advisory Committee (NSAC), which he chaired from 2000 – 2002.

Research Interest

 biochemistry