Brookhaven National Laboratory appoints its first female director

Brookhaven National Laboratory officials on Monday named Joan Hewitt, a theoretical physicist known for her studies of hidden dimensions of space and time, as the next director of the Upton facility — making her the first woman in that role in the lab’s 76-year history.

Hewitt, 63, will head the only federal lab on Long Island this summer as the $2 billion Upton Super Collider facility begins building and develops a business incubator designed to match local entrepreneurs and inventors with BNL scientists.

Hewitt is associate laboratory director and chief research officer at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a federal laboratory on the campus of Stanford University in Menlo Park, California.

Brookhaven officials said Hewitt’s arrival is expected in July, when she will succeed manager Don Gibbs, who will retire on April 17. Deputy Director of Operations Jack Anderson will serve as interim director, according to lab officials.

Hewitt said in an interview with Newsday that she sees herself as a role model for young women pursuing scientific careers and pointed to a program she helped create at Stanford where girls participate in hands-on science projects.

“It just goes to show that the system is fair, and it’s very likely that anyone, anywhere, can rise to the occasion and do what they want to do and lead the lab,” Hewitt said of her upcoming history-making role.

Hewitt said she was drawn to Brookhaven because of the opportunity to work in a facility that is “on the cutting edge of science”.

Hewitt will oversee an annual budget of $700 million and will consist of 2,800 scientists, engineers, technicians and professionals whose research ranges from studies of the origins of the universe to practical applications of advanced batteries.

As a scientist, she is known for her work studying extra spatial dimensions, and the theory that there may be additional layers of space and time beyond what is currently known or observable, according to Stanford officials.

Hewitt said she finds it “very exciting” to come to a lab that is “the only place on the planet that’s building a new collider.”

She will also be a professor in Stony Brook University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and at the university’s Cin Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Lab officials said they chose Hewitt because of her managerial abilities and experience at the Stanford lab, home to the linear particle accelerator used in subatomic particle research.

Maury McInnes, president of Stony Brook University, which operates the lab with an Ohio-based nonprofit, said Hewitt “brings vital experience and proven leadership skills.”

Governor Kathy Hochul, noting in a statement that Hewitt will make history as the lab’s first female leader, also called her “incredibly competent and talented.”

A St. Louis native, Hewitt said her first goal as someone who had never been to East Chicago was to get to know Long Island.

Its arrival in Brookhaven will coincide with new projects that are expected to expand the laboratory’s role in the island’s economy.

The US Department of Energy, which owns the lab, selected Brookhaven in 2020 to build the Electron Ion Collider, or EIC, a next-generation super-collider that will replace the two-decade-old Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC.

Officials said the new collider, which is expected to take a decade to complete at a cost of between $1.7 billion and $2.8 billion, will create about 4,000 construction jobs and save 1,000 jobs that would have been lost when RHIC is phased out in the next three years.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that he will work with Hewett to “ensure that the EIC project remains on track and that BNL has all the resources it needs to immediately make the discoveries of the future right here on Long Island.”

Brookhaven is also developing Discovery Park, a new facility on the university’s 5,322-acre campus that will include spaces where business and science leaders can meet and exchange ideas.