BNL director resigning

After three years of steering Brookhaven National Laboratory through difficult financial times, Director Praveen Chaudhari announced he is stepping down to work part-time as a scientist at the lab and to spend more time with his family. Chaudhari, a metallurgist, had a particularly rough time at the lab in recent months when federal funding fell short of what was needed to run the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Chaudhari announced the shutdown of RHIC and the prospect of staff layoffs before Jim Simons, a physicist-turned-billionaire investment expert, stepped in with $13 million to fund RHIC’s current run (see Physics Today, March 2006, page 26 ). “The laboratory is in very good shape, and I feel it is time for me to make a change,” he said. He noted that he has been in a long-distance relationship with his wife since taking the Brookhaven job. “It has been a difficult period for both of us.” His announcement came just after the administration proposed a fiscal year 2007 budget that would solve Brookhaven’s funding woes.