Liyuan Liang, a celebrated chemist and emerging science administrator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named director of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory in Washington state. The lab is a research user facility at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Liang has performed multiple roles at ORNL, including a tenure as director of the lab’s Office of Institutional Planning. She also headed a scientific team that tackled many of the perplexing issues about mercury in the environment — including how mercury is transformed into methylmercury, its most toxic form.
Allison Campbell, an associate director at Pacific Northwest, said in a statement: Continue reading