Biography

Roger Falcone is a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and an affiliate of Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group, the Applied Science and Technology Program, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. As of January 2018, he is a Professor of the Graduate School at Berkeley. He received his A.B. in Physics (1974) from Princeton and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (1979) from Stanford, and was the Marvin Chodorow Fellow in Applied Physics (1980-83) at Stanford.

Falcone was Chair of the Berkeley Physics Department (1995-2000), Director of the Advanced Light Source x-ray synchrotron facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2006-2017), and President of the American Physical Society (APS)  (2018).

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and OPTICA (The Optical Society - OSA). 

Falcone Chairs the Advisory Board for the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland; Chairs the International Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (ISTAC) of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC); and Chairs the Department of Energy (DOE) Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) LaserNetUS Science Advisory Board. 

He is a member of the: International Scientific Advisory Committee for the French Apollon Research Infrastructure; External Advisory Committee of NSF's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University; Scientific Advisory Committee for the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory; NSF OPAL External Advisory Board, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester; Advisory Board of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium at UC Berkeley; and PULSE Institute External Advisory Committee, Stanford University.

Falcone is Chief Scientific Officer of Alpha RIng International, a company focused on applications of fusion energy, and serves on the Science and Technology Advisory Board of Xcimer Energy, a company focused on putting fusion energy on the grid.

He has served on the Advisory Board for the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS), UC Berkeley's public science center; was co-founding-director of CalTeach, UC Berkeley’s program for undergraduate STEM majors interested in exploring a career in education; served on the Board of Directors of the Hertz Foundation; was a founding trustee of the Lafayette Library & Learning Center in his hometown; and was elected as a member, and served as president, of his local school board. He was director of the UC Institute for Materials Dynamics at Extreme Conditions, and served on the Science and Technology Committee for the Board of Governors of Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore Labs: the US & Russian National Academy of Sciences’ Study Committee on Missile Defense; and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Program Advisory Committee. He was co-chair of the NSF-DMR Committee for the Materials 2022 Report and chair of the DOE-SC-, NNSA-, NSF-, and NPI-supported Brightest Light Initiative Workshop (2019), and was co-chair of the NSF MPS Facilities and Major Research Infrastructure Subcommittee. 

Falcone received the APS 5-Sigma Physicist Award for Outstanding Advocacy (2019), APS Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics (2015, with seven others), APS Leo Szilard Lectureship Award (2005, with the APS Study Group), and Halbach Prize for Instrumentation at the ALS, LBNL (2000, with one other). He was an APS Distinguished Traveling Lecturer of the Laser Science Topical Group (1992-93) and received the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the NSF (1984).