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Catastrophic fires in Northern California burned more than 110,000 acres in Sonoma and Napa counties last month -- including 8 percent of the Russian River watershed. Now with the rainy season underway Berkeley Lab's research -- which seeks to understand how the hydrology and microbiology of the surface and groundwater system respond to extreme events -- has become even more critical.

Studies at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have made the first real-time observations of how silica -- an abundant material in the Earth's crust -- easily transforms into a dense glass when hit with a massive shock wave like one generated from a meteor impact.

Helen Quinn, a professor emerita at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, will receive the 2018 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics - one of eight prestigious Franklin Institute Awards that will be handed out in Philadelphia next April.

When hit by a powerful shock wave, materials can change their shape -- a property known as plasticity - yet keep their lattice-like atomic structure. Now scientists have used the X-ray laser at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to see, for the first time, how a material's atomic structure deforms when shocked by pressures nearly as extreme as the ones at the center of the Earth.

Former SLAC Director and Stanford University Professor Emeritus Jonathan Dorfan has been awarded Japan's Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star for his contributions as founding president of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST). It is the highest award Japan bestows on university presidents.