Roger W. Falcone

University of California, Berkeley


Primary Section: 13, Physics
Secondary Section: 31, Engineering Sciences
Membership Type:
Member (elected 2019)

Biosketch

Roger Falcone is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in New York City, and attended Princeton and Stanford Universities. He has served as department chair at Berkeley, director of the Advanced Light Source synchrotron facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and president of the American Physical Society. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and fellow of the American Physical Society, Optical Society of America, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the APS 5-Sigma Physicist Award for Outstanding Advocacy, APS Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics, APS Leo Szilard Lectureship Award, LBNL ALS Halbach Prize for Instrumentation, and NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. His service includes advisory boards for the Lawrence Hall of Science, trustee of the Lafayette Library & Learning Center, president of his local school board, director of Berkeley's CalTeach Program, and director of the UC Institute for Material Dynamics at Extreme Conditions. He has served on advisory committees for Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, NSF, and DOE, chairs advisory committees for the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) and ELI Beamlines (Czech Republic), and serves on several scientific advisory panels for national and international projects.

Research Interests

Roger Falcone undertakes experiments that explore the interaction of intense light with matter. The work uses lasers, involves regions of the spectrum ranging from optical to x-ray, and reveals the dynamic (ultrafast) response of materials (atoms, molecules, solids, and plasmas) to non-equilibrium conditions caused by intense light, high temperatures, and high pressures. The goals of the work include an understanding of the resulting chemistry, structural dynamics, ionization, and compressibility, by measuring the response of materials under these extreme conditions. Applications are found in fields such as plasma and fusion science, photo-induced chemistry, and astrophysical systems. Together with students and global collaborators, he has developed lasers with high-power and ultra-short pulses, fast x-ray detectors, unique nanostructured materials, and experimental techniques that involve both tabletop experiments as well as the world's largest and most advanced laser and x-ray facilities. His group has demonstrated new ways of producing femtosecond pulses of x-rays, measured the physical and chemical response of materials subjected to pressures of a billion atmospheres, and probed the structural and electronic response of materials to perturbations on timescales associated with the motion of electrons and atoms in chemical bonds.

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