News from Berkeley Lab

Lori Zscherpel Named Berkeley Lab’s Chief Finance Officer

Lori Zscherpel has been named Chief Finance Officer (CFO) for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), starting in mid-August 2023.

As CFO, Zscherpel will be responsible for all financial activities of the Laboratory, providing vision, leadership, and direction for Berkeley Lab’s financial functions, leading a team of dedicated finance, procurement, and business service professionals in the Office of the Chief Finance Officer, and serving as a bellwether for financial stewardship and transparency.

She brings decades of leadership experience in budget, finance, and accounting. Most recently, she served for more than a decade in various roles at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, including as budget officer and controller.

Prior to her time at SLAC, she spent more than 20 years in finance positions in the high tech industry at companies such as Sylantro, Solectron, Verifone, and Hewlett Packard.

Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell said: “Lori’s many years of experience in financial leadership in both the DOE system and at SLAC, a university-managed national lab like Berkeley Lab, is critical to responsibly stewarding the taxpayer dollars that are entrusted to us, especially as we continue to manage a number of major capital projects. I’m looking forward to working with her to support our science mission and achieve our operations priorities.”

Zscherpel’s appointment follows a national search. She replaces Chief Finance Officer Minh Huebner, who left Berkeley Lab in October 2022.

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Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.