After a nearly 30-year career at Berkeley Lab, which includes bringing formal Earned Value Management to the Lab, helping to stand up the Project Planning and Controls Department, and serving as the Engineering Division’s Deputy for Operations, Michael Barry will retire in June 2026.
“I love the people I work with,” says Barry. “The Engineering Division has been a great home for me all these years. I love the collaborative nature of getting out amongst our partner divisions and seeing all the different science and the different people—the diverse community of the Lab is just incredible.”
Barry’s career began in the US Navy, where he completed a two-year advanced electronics program and then served onboard ships as a lead sonar technician. This experience allowed him to develop his interest in technology, something he had gravitated toward in childhood.
“In the Navy, I learned how to operate and maintain sonar systems, and do all the troubleshooting, and alignments, and quality control,” Barry explains. “I fell in love with it, and I may have made a career out of it in the Navy, but I didn’t like being away from my wife and the family that I wanted. Joining the Navy for six years gave me the GI Bill, which then paid for my college, and allowed me to get in the door here.”
Barry has had a diverse career at Berkeley Lab. He joined the Lab as a contracted administrative assistant while finishing college. Once he graduated, he worked in purchasing as a buyer and then stepped into a role in finance. It was then that he came under the wing of Barbara Thibadeau, who became a mentor to Barry and introduced him to what eventually became project controls at the Lab. This coincided with a movement within the Department of Energy to formalize reporting on projects using the Earned Value Management System (EVMS).
An aerial view of the Molecular Foundry building taken in 2025. Barry helped work on the Molecular Foundry construction project, which was used to certify Berkeley Lab’s EVMS. (Credit: Robinson Kuntz, Berkeley Lab)
Barry helped work on the Molecular Foundry construction project, which was used to certify Berkeley Lab’s EVMS. After this, EVMS was rolled out on major projects across Berkeley Lab, with the Lab becoming the first in the DOE Office of Science to gain EVMS certification.
This was the beginning of what would go on to become the Project Planning and Controls Department within the Engineering Division. Barry was second in command of this new department, which was led by Denis Peterson at its inception. When Peterson retired, Barry took over as department head.
“Walking around the Lab, I’ve touched most of the buildings that were constructed since I’ve been here, in terms of the project management side,” comments Barry. “And that goes for what’s in them, too. I’ve been on a lot of the construction projects for the experiments inside them, everything from the Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope (TEAM) in the National Center for Electron Microscopy and GRETA in Nuclear Science.”
In 2010, Barry was part of the group that received the Secretary of Energy’s Excellence in Acquisition Award for his work on TEAM. This award is given by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to management teams that have demonstrated “exceptional results in completing a project within cost and schedule.”
Following this, Barry went on to serve as the business manager for the Engineering Division. He was promoted to Engineering Division Deputy of Operations under former Division Director Henrik von der Lippe.
“The funny story about that is, when I got the job, it was March 1, 2020,” Barry says. “I was really excited about it because I knew the Division, I knew its operations, and I knew how everything worked. And I had my thoughts about where to take things and improve things. I think it was 17 days later that we went into COVID lockdown, and everybody went home, and everything changed. It was quite the experience.”
Barry says that he and von der Lippe had to rethink how the Division worked in the midst of a critical moment when ALS-U was ramping up and in-person work was needed in the Engineering Division shops.
“I am excited for the new adventures and opportunities Mike’s retirement will bring to him and his family,” says Daniela Leitner, Berkeley Lab’s Engineering Division Director and Chief Engineer. “While we will deeply miss his leadership and presence, his impact will continue to be felt across the Engineering Division.”
In his role as the Engineering Division Deputy of Operations, Barry has been responsible for the long- and short-term strategic leadership and planning for the Division’s operational groups, with an annual operating budget of $20 million.
Reflecting on his career at the Lab, Barry says, “I constantly find myself standing back and thinking, ‘Am I really here?’ It’s just such a contrast from what my early life was like, and I couldn’t have envisioned this. Three things happened that made a huge difference: joining the Navy, meeting my wife, and getting hired here at the Lab.”
