Following a national search, Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences Paul Adams has announced that Junko Yano, known for her research in natural and artificial photosynthetic systems, has been named the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division Director. In her 22-year career at the Lab, Yano has progressed from postdoctoral fellow to senior scientist and has held leadership roles in the MBIB Division since 2015, most recently as Interim Director. She has been a co-principal investigator in two DOE-funded Energy Innovation Hubs: the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA) since 2020 and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis for ten years prior to that.

Yano is also a co-PI of the Center for Electrochemical Dynamics and Reactions on Surface (CEDARS), a HBCU (Historically Black College or University)-led Energy Frontier Research Center that was funded by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences in 2022. This has opened opportunities for Berkeley Lab scientists to work with North Carolina A&T State University students and faculty. 

Over the last two decades, Yano’s research interests have been broadly in the field of biophysics and renewable energy that has cut across many disciplines. Her most notable contributions have been in the fields of both natural and artificial photosynthesis, metalloenzymes relevant to renewable energy, and X-ray science in the hard and soft X-ray energy ranges using spectroscopy and crystallography. She and her group study how, during photosynthesis, plants use light to split water using the manganese-calcium catalytic center, converting light energy into chemical energy. Understanding this fundamental biological process informs her efforts to mimic this natural phenomenon in the lab.