Paul Kearns has been appointed director of the United States Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.

The appointment was announced last week by University President Robert Zimmer, who serves as the chairman of the board of directors of UChicago Argonne LLC, which runs Argonne for the Department of Energy.

“Paul has a strong record of leadership at laboratories across the country and brings to Argonne a deep understanding of how to support and advance research and scientific discovery,” Zimmer said. “We look forward to working with him on an ambitious program of research in science and engineering that helps address critical challenges faced by society.”

Kearns was most recently the interim director of Argonne and has had prior leadership experiences in the Department of Energy, Battelle Global Laboratory Operations, and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Kearns will be the 14th director of Argonne, a science and engineering research center established in 1946 that studies a wide range of topics, including renewable energy, supercomputing, and national security. The laboratory works closely with the University in many of these areas, notably quantum computing and microbiome research.