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The University of California announced today that its decision regarding a preferred site for the second campus of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is expected to be announced in early 2012. 

The timeline for the second campus selection process had called for a late-November announcement. 

“We have been working diligently over the past months since announcing our list of finalists,” says Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos. “We want to thank all the cities, developers and community members who have been participating in our selection process. We have been overwhelmed by the positive and extremely thoughtful responses from the communities of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond. We are deeply grateful for such well-formulated responses, but find that we need a bit more time to fully evaluate our options and to confer with stakeholders in order to arrive at the best possible decision. We have a number of excellent options before us. Our goal now is to complete this phase of the process and announce a preferred site as soon as we can.” 

The vision of the second campus is to consolidate existing Berkeley Lab bio-science programs currently in leased space throughout the East Bay, to provide opportunity for future laboratory expansion, and to secure a venue that continues the 80-year tradition of close collaboration between the Berkeley Lab and the UC Berkeley campus.  

The University of California received more than 20 responses when a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) was released earlier this year. The number of sites under review was narrowed in May to: 

Alameda Point, in the city of Alameda; Berkeley Aquatic Park West, located in West Berkeley; Brooklyn Basin, located in Oakland; Emeryville/Berkeley, (includes properties currently occupied by the Lab in Emeryville and West Berkeley); Golden Gate Fields, spanning the cities of Berkeley and Albany; Richmond Field Station, a site currently owned by the University of California. 

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.