The leadership of Iowa State’s primary research laboratory is changing hands.

Alexander King, professor and head of the School of Materials Engineering at Purdue University, will assume the position as director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory at Iowa State on Jan. 1, 2008.

King said he thinks any changes he will make will be relatively subtle.

“I think some work needs to be done in giving a little bit wider recognition in the things that the lab does, and making sure the Department of Energy knows what it does,” King said.

King will succeed Thomas Barton, who held the position for nearly 20 years and had indicated he would like to return to the chemistry faculty upon his departure as director.

Alan Goldman, division director of science and technology at Ames Laboratory and distinguished professor of physics and astronomy, has served as the interim director for the laboratory since March 1 of this year.

The position of Ames Lab director is multifaceted. As the chief administrator of the lab, the director works closely with the U.S. Department of Energy to plotthe direction of the laboratory, determine research priorities and work with the research staff at Iowa State, said Kerry Gibson, communication specialist with the Ames Lab.

Running for the position as the new Ames Lab director was no easy task for the candidates or those weighted with the power to appoint the final position.

Bruce Thompson, distinguished professor of the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, was chairman of the 14-member search committee that narrowed down the large-scale search for the new director to five potential candidates. The selection process initiated with the nomination of more than 100 individuals, many of whom chose not to submit applications for the position, Thompson said.

“When the search committee contacted me, I was first flattered because the lab is distinguished and well known in the field of materials and I decided to pursue the position out of curiosity,” King said.

At that point in the selection process, airport interviews were held in Des Moines that were designed to be highly anonymous to protect candidates.

From these interviews, five candidates were invited to come to the ISU campus for the finals of the process. Each spent one-and-a-half to two days on campus to speak in an open forum for anybody who was interested. During the visit, candidates also attended meetings with various groups such as the search committee and the executive council.

The visit to the campus was meant for the applicant evaluators to learn more about the individual position applicants but also to sell the position to them. The final five candidates all had high credentials, “so part is to try to sell them that [the laboratory] is a good place to be by answering questions in an informal setting,” Thompson said.

King said during this time he received a call from President Gregory Geoffroy, who asked if he was interested in the job.

“I said I was much more interested than I was [initially],” King said. “Then I had to go with him to Washington, D.C., and had a meeting with the secretary of energy, Samuel Bodman, himself, and resulted in my being offered the position.”

King has previously served as an assistant professor, associate professor and then professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at State University of New York at Stony Brook, according to a press release. He was an associate, acting, and vice provost at Stony Brook, research associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Metallurgy and Science of Materials at the University of Oxford England.