The search has begun for a replacement for the director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

University of California President Robert Dynes has named 10 members to a committee that will advise him in the search for a replacement for Charles Shank.

According to a lab press release, Dynes hopes to have a recommendation to UC regents by May. The group's first meeting will be at 3:30 p.m. Thursday at the lab.

Shank has been director of the lab since 1989. He announced earlier that he will step down by the end of the year. Shank will remain as a member of the UC Berkeley faculty.

The search committee includes George Blumenthal, a professor in the astronomy and astrophysics department at UC Santa Cruz; Beth Burnside, vice chancellor for research and a professor of cell development biology at UC Berkeley; and John Clarke, an investigator in the material sciences division at Berkeley lab and a physics professor at UC Berkeley.

Other committee members are Ward Connerly, a UC regent and president of Connerly and Associates; Sidney Drell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of theoretical physics (emeritus) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; Judith Hopkinson, a UC regent and former chief operating officer of Ameriquest Capital Corp.; Peter Preuss, UC regent and president of the Preuss Foundation Inc.; Laurence Seigler, president of Alumni Associations of UC and an ex officio regent; Peter Wolynes, a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego; and one additional member of the UC regents to be named later.