Charles Vernon (Chuck) Shank (born July 12, 1943) is an American physicist, best known as the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1989 to 2004.

[7][8] He studied the femtochemistry of rhodopsin, a photosensitive pigment found in the eye that is an important component of the mechanism of human vision.

Through the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, he made the laboratory a locus for supercomputing.

The laboratory's SuperNova Acceleration Probe (SNAP) formed part of the Joint Dark Energy Mission to explore dark energy in collaboration with NASA, and it worked with the University of California, San Francisco's Comprehensive Cancer Center to study the disease.

[2] In this role he helped identify the most critical technologies required to advance the United States' national security and economic prosperity.

He remains a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a member of campus advisory boards.