The UC Board of Regents voted on May 26 to pursue continued management and operations of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Regents voted to grant UC President Robert Dynes the authority to submit a competitive proposal to the Department of Energy by the July 19 deadline. The final bid will be submitted by a UC and Bechtel-led team that includes BWX Technologies Inc. and Washington Group International, as well as a consortium of New Mexico higher education institutions.

The regents also voted to appoint Michael Anastasio the director of the lab, contingent upon the university and Bechtel-led team being awarded the contract for future management of Los Alamos. Anastasio has led the DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 2002.

In other business, the regents named Michael Drake, longtime UC faculty member and administrator, and current UC vice president for health affairs, to the post of chancellor of UC Irvine. Drake, 54, becomes the campus's fifth chancellor effective July 1, replacing Ralph Cicerone, chancellor since July 1998, who has been elected president of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.

Drake was chosen from a pool of some 650 candidates. Regents OK'd an annual salary of $350,000 — a zero percent increase over Drake's current salary and a 25 percent increase over the position's current salary of $280,700. The $350,000 salary lags the average salary of a UC comparison group of institutions by 21 percent. For details and videos of Drake talking about his new post, see http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2005/may26.html.

Also on May 26, the regents deferred a final vote on proposed professional school fee increases for the 2005-06 year. Regents' Chairman Gerald Parsky, noted the absence of several regents interested in the issue and said that the proposed increases will be presented to the full board at a special meeting yet to be scheduled. The professional school fee increases passed in committee.