07.01.2013

DESY‘s Administrative Council reappointed directors in office

DESY’s Administrative Council has extended the term of office of Professor Helmut Dosch, chair of the DESY Board of Directors, for another five years until the end of February 2018. The council also made the unanimous decision to confirm in office as of 2014 the DESY high-energy and astroparticle physics, and photon science research directors Professor Joachim Mnich and Professor Edgar Weckert for another five years. “We are glad that we were able to win Professor Dosch for another five years as chair of the DESY Board of Directors. At the same time, the reappointment of the research directors Professor Joachim Mnich and Professor Edgar Weckert sets the decisive course for the future of DESY” emphasised Dr. Beatrix Vierkorn-Rudolph, chair of the Administrative Council and head of the subsection “Large Facilities and Basic Research, ESFRI Special Task” of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. DESY’s accelerator physics research director Professor Reinhard Brinkmann and DESY’s administration director Christian Scherf had previously been reappointed for another five years.

The DESY Board of Directors: Prof. Edgar Weckert, Christian Scherf, Prof. Helmut Dosch, Prof. Christian Stegmann, Dr. Reinhard Brinkmann, Prof. Joachim Mnich (from left to right)

“DESY is very well positioned for the challenges of the future,” Dosch pointed out. “We take advantage of the chances offered by a dynamically developing research environment.” The current large-scale projects include the construction and commissioning of the X-ray laser European XFEL accelerator, with DESY as the main shareholder. “The DESY X-ray light sources PETRA III and FLASH and the future European XFEL allow top-level research in many fields as physics, biology, materials and life sciences, thus promoting research for the major challenges of our society – for example in the field of energy, environment and health,” Weckert remarks.

In high-energy physics, DESY is furthermore developing its role as a mainstay of particle physics in Germany and as an important cooperation partner of the European nuclear research centre CERN in Geneva. DESY scientists considerably participated in the discovery of the Higgs-like new particle at the Large Hadron Collider LHC. “With a strong and visible contribution to the upgrade of the LHC detectors ATLAS and CMS, we will increase the importance of DESY at the world’s largest particle accelerator further,” Mnich stressed.

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY is the leading accelerator centre in Germany and is among the leading accelerator centres in the world. DESY develops, builds and operates particle accelerators for the investigation of matter at the level of smallest elementary particles up to molecules.