About UChicago Argonne, LLC
Board of Governors
Charles V. Shank, Ph.D.
- Member, UChicago Argonne, LLC Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratory
- Director at Large, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Charles Vernon Shank served as Director of Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., for 15 years, stepping down in 2004 and returning to the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a tenured professor in three departments - physics, chemistry, and electrical engineering and computer science. He remains Director at Large at the Berkeley laboratory, where he continues a vigorous research program and supervises a team of Berkeley graduate students studying ultrafast processes. A nationally recognized scientist and research leader, he is author or co-author of more than 200 scientific publications.
Shank earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 1965, 1966 and '69, respectively. During 20 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories, he held numerous leadership positions, finishing as Director of the Electronics Research Laboratory. Using short laser pulses, he made pioneering contributions to the study of events that occur in a millionth of a billionth of a second. He contributed to fiber optic communications with the invention of the distributed feedback laser, a component in high-data-rate transmission systems.
Shank has served on the California Council on Science and Technology, the National Critical Technologies Panel of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Competitiveness, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Solid State Sciences Committee of the National Research Council, the Environmental Technology Export Council and the California Business-Higher Education Forum. He chaired the National Research Council's Committee on Optical Science and Engineering, which published its report in 1998.
His honors include the R.W. Wood Prize of the Optical Society of America (OSA); the David Sarnoff and Morris E. Leeds awards of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE); the Edgerton Award of the International Society for Optical Engineering; the John Scott Award; the Edward P. Longstreth Medal of the Franklin Society; and the George E. Pake and Arthur L. Schawlow prizes of the American Physical Society (APS).
Shank was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the APS, the IEEE, and the OSA.
Shank began serving on Argonne 's Board of Governors in 2004.
