The University of Hamburg and DESY have won a shared Alexander von Humboldt professorship for the development of accelerators and particle physics. The renowned award goes to Professor Brian Foster, currently head of Particle Physics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research announced today. Assuming successful conclusions to negotiations, Foster will receive up to 5 million Euros over a period of five years to fund research into the development and realisation of acceleration technologies for particle physics and continued analysis of data from DESY’s flagship accelerator, HERA.

The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, which is being financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the International Research Fund for Germany, is the most renowned international science award in Germany. It enables award winners, who have to be nominated by a university or a consortium of a research centre and a university, to carry out long-term and ground-breaking research at universities and research institutions in Germany. Foster is the first particle physicist to be awarded a Humboldt professorship. The appointment is for a shared position at both the university and at DESY, affirming Hamburg’s leading role in the development, operation and analysis of particle accelerators.

“I am very pleased that the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has accepted our nomination. Brian Foster one of the most renowned particle physicists. If we can convince him to come to Hamburg the ties between the University and DESY will become even closer,” said professor Dieter Lenzen, president of Hamburg University.

“I am delighted that the Humboldt Foundation has accepted our nomination,” said professor Helmut Dosch, chairman of the board of directors at DESY. “Brian will be pivotal in securing DESY’s leading national and international role in the development of particle accelerators for science.“

Professor Brian Foster knows Hamburg well: his first scientific post after completing his PhD was at the TASSO experiments at DESY’s PETRA accelerator. He then joined the ZEUS collaboration at DESY’s flagship accelerator HERA and later became its spokesman. Foster has also worked on experiments at CERN in Geneva and at SLAC in the United States and is currently the European Director of a global team of accelerator and particle physicists who plan the next generation of particle physics experiments, the International Linear Collider. He is winner of the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize (1999) and the Max Born Medal and Prize (2003) awarded jointly by the German Physical Society and the UK Institute of Physics and a Fellow of the UK’s Royal Society. Foster said, “I am deeply honoured to be awarded a Humboldt Professorship and am grateful to the Humboldt Foundation for its confidence and its offer to extend my work in accelerator and particle physics using DESY's exceptional facilities. I look forward to discussions with colleagues in Hamburg on how I can take up this extremely exciting opportunity."