Geneva, 4 November 2014. At its 173rd Closed Session today, CERN1
Council selected the Italian physicist, Dr Fabiola Gianotti, as the
Organization’s next Director-General. The appointment will be formalised
at the December session of Council, and Dr Gianotti’s mandate will
begin on 1 January 2016 and run for a period of five years. Council
rapidly converged in favour of Dr Gianotti.
“We were extremely impressed with all three candidates put forward by the search committee,” said President of Council Agnieszka Zalewska. “It
was Dr Gianotti’s vision for CERN’s future as a world leading
accelerator laboratory, coupled with her in-depth knowledge of both CERN
and the field of experimental particle physics that led us to this
outcome. I would like to thank all the candidates for giving Council
such a hard decision to make, and the search committee for all its hard
work over recent months.”
“Fabiola Gianotti is an excellent choice to be my successor,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “It
has been a pleasure to work with her for many years. I look forward to
continuing to work with her through the transition year of 2015, and am
confident that CERN will be in very good hands.”
“It is a great honour and responsibility for
me to be selected as the next CERN Director-General following 15
outstanding predecessors,” said Dr Gianotti. “CERN is a centre
of scientific excellence, and a source of pride and inspiration for
physicists from all over the world. CERN is also a cradle for technology
and innovation, a fount of knowledge and education, and a shining,
concrete example of worldwide scientific cooperation and peace. It is
the combination of these four assets that renders CERN so unique, a
place that makes better scientists and better people. I will fully
engage myself to maintain CERN’s excellence in all its attributes, with
the help of everybody, including CERN Council, staff and users from all
over the world.”...
Dr Gianotti was leader of the ATLAS experiment
collaboration from March 2009 to February 2013, covering the period in
which the LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS announced the long-awaited
discovery of the so-called Higgs boson, recognised by the award of the
Nobel Prize to François Englert and Peter Higgs in 2013. She is a member
of many international committees, and has received many prestigious
awards. She will be the first woman to hold the position of CERN
Director-General.
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's
leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in
Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria,
the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary,
Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a
Candidate for Accession. Serbia is an Associate Member in the pre-stage
to Membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States
of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer
Status.
A press conference will be held at CERN’s Globe of
Science Innovation this afternoon at 15:00, at which Dr Gianotti will
be joined by the President of CERN Council and the CERN
Director-General. The recording from the press conference is available here.
