Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (LBNL)
Fall 2025 Report
Submitted by Nancy J. Brown, Ex-Ls CUCRA representative
Membership: The Ex-Ls revised their brochure to enhance its suitability for attracting new members. Our in-person activities, although limited, continue to increase. The EX-Ls appreciate the generous financial support from the CUCRA travel program that helps support ours recruitment efforts.
Concerns: Our retirees have been active in a number of in-person events. Attendance is modest, and we would like to see more people turn-out. We have very large attendance for our Zoom talks, for which we are very gratified. While we are anxious to resume in-person meetings, we will continue Zoom talks for those not able to attend in person. It is, however, very important for the Ex-Ls to continue some meetings in person to enable members to chat with people that they know, to meet others who worked at the lab, and to recruit new members. Having more live events, hopefully, will facilitate filling the Ex-Ls leadership positions that remain vacant.
Activities: Our members enjoyed attending the June Director’s reception for new and current LBL Retirees. Several Berkeley Center retirees participated in the tour of LBNL’s Advanced Light Source that was conducted by Laboratory staff. The Ex-Ls and other Berkeley retirees celebrated summer by attending the annual picnic at Tilden Park. The Ex-Ls hosted three very timely talks on Zoom: the first: John Swartzberg gave an update on COVID and explained many of the attributes of bird-flu. John is an expert on Infectious Diseases and is a Berkeley Emeriti. The second talk was concerned with new computing resources being developed at the Laboratory in support of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). LBNL is the site chosen for DOE’s newest super computer, “Doudna.” The Ex-Ls also participated in the Annual LBNL runaround in dual roles as participates in the race and as volunteers.
Retirement Center Interactions: The Berkeley Retirement Center hosted the summer CUCRA meeting at Berkeley. The CUCRA notes describing the meeting content are on the CUCRA website. We are grateful for the considerable support that Cary Sweeny and Camille Koue continue to provide to us from the Berkeley Retirement Center. We greatly appreciate the various tutorials about life in retirement that are presented by the Center that are very helpful to our membership.