Former Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory chief Paul Alivisatos has emerged as the front-runner to replace UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, who plans to exit by the end of May after a bumpy 3½-year tenure.

UC President Janet Napolitano has promised to name a new chancellor in time for the Board of Regents’ meeting in March. Right now, all signs point to the 57-year-old Alivisatos, vice chancellor for research at UC Berkeley.

“He will have immediate credibility with a whole swath of people on campus, and if the goal is protecting our core mission — run by the hard sciences — then they got their guy,” said one administration insider who is following the hiring sweepstakes, speaking on condition of anonymity because the selection process isn’t public.

Getting someone who will protect the “core mission” took on added importance when President Trump questioned in a tweet whether the university should continue to receive federal funds after Wednesday night’s violent protest kept right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus.

Napolitano is expected to interview a handful of finalists for the chancellor’s job within the next couple of weeks. Candidates have been drawn both from within and outside the UC system.

Alivisatos would definitely be counted as a Cal insider — which many on campus view as a real plus, after Dirks’ uneasy transition from the private environment of Columbia University.

Alivisatos earned his doctorate in chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1986 and joined the school’s faculty two years later. After holding a series of jobs at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he was named in 2009 to succeed lab Director Steven Chu, who headed off to Washington to be then-President Barack Obama’s energy secretary.

Alivisatos ran the lab until 2015, when then-Vice Chancellor for Research Graham Fleming resigned amid allegations that he had sexually harassed his top assistant — and Alivisatos was brought in to calm the waters.

And he doesn’t lack for intellectual cred. The National Academy of Sciences just announced that Alivisatos, an expert in nanochemistry, will be one of five people honored in Washington, D.C., this spring for “extraordinary scientific achievements.”

Impressive as they are, Alivisatos’ scientific successes don’t exactly make for the star power of, say, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich , currently at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Despite urging by fellow faculty, however, Reich has not applied for the chancellor’s job, according to sources in the know.

Reich did not return calls for comment, and Alivisatos declined to be interviewed “out of respect for the integrity and fairness of the process.”

The only other in-house candidate being mentioned is Reich’s boss, Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School.

Many believe Brady has plenty more charisma than Alivisatos, but he lacks the science pedigree that may be needed to protect the school’s all-important research dollars.

“My candidate is (interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost) Carol Christ, and I hope they choose her — she would be fabulous,” Brady told us last week. “And it’s time they had a woman chancellor.”

It’s true that no woman has ever been at the top of UC’s flagship campus. But Christ — a former Smith College president who was pulled out of retirement to come to Cal — has told colleagues she doesn’t want the job.

Put it all together, says one UC insider, and Alivisatos is the one candidate standing who meets most of the criteria considered important — namely, “someone from inside who knows Berkeley, who has been a CEO and someone who the faculty will accept.”

Caltrain shocker: Freshly empowered California Republicans in Congress are pushing the Trump administration to hold off on approving $647 million for the Caltrain system to go electric — something that could kill the redo of a line that carries more than 60,000 riders a day between the South Bay and San Francisco.

“It’s critical that we get the funding,” said Caltrain spokesman Seamus Murphy.

In a Jan. 24 letter to newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, all 18 members of the state’s GOP congressional delegation called for the Caltrain money to be put on hold until a full audit is done on Gov. Jerry Brown’s high-speed rail project.

The Republicans don’t have anything against Caltrain electrification per se — it’s the high-speed rail line they can’t stand. And high-speed trains will have no way of getting from San Jose to San Francisco if the Caltrain line isn’t electrified.

Caltrain says that if its federal funding is delayed — even for a couple of months — it could mean having to rebid the work already being contracted out. Losing the money entirely would effectively kill electrification of the line.

Republicans have long seen high-speed rail as a boondoggle, but they’ve been up against an Obama administration that refused to spike its funding. That’s not a problem anymore.

Caltrain and its advocates hope the tech titans along the Peninsula and in the South Bay can convince the Trump administration of the project’s pluses. One such plus: the jobs that electrification will create both here and in red states such as Utah, where 500 people are to be put to work building new train cars for the line.

A decision is due soon — the funding renewal will be on Chao’s desk for signing by mid-February.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross