XFEL ISC designated the two Managing Directors for the European XFEL GmbH

At its recent meeting on October 17, 2007, the International XFEL Steering Committee (ISC) designated the physicists Professor Massimo Altarelli and Karl Witte as the two Managing Directors of the future European XFEL GmbH (company with limited liability).

The current leader of the European XFEL Project Team Massimo Altarelli will assume the Chairman position of the XFEL Management Board. Karl Witte, who currently is in charge of administration and finance in the European XFEL Project Team, will become the Administrative Director. Both have been working as scientists and as managers of big research centres as well.

The Italian Massimo Altarelli had been Research Director of the European Synchrotron Radiation Source ESRF in its period of foundation and later Managing Director of the Elettra Synchrotron Light Source in Trieste. The German Karl Witte worked at the University of Hamburg and, from 1987 to 2005, as a member of the ESRF management team in Grenoble (France).

The XFEL ISC also nominated the members of a selection committee to designate three more Directors of the future European XFEL GmbH. Apart from these personnel issues, the Steering Committee discussed the preparatory work concerning the foundation of this international XFEL organisation, such as the signing of a multi-governmental convention as the next important step, the selection of instruments for the six measurement stations of the start-up configuration of the European XFEL facility, and the handling of the potential in-kind contributions. Following requests of Norway and Slovakia, the XFEL ISC invited these two countries to join the Memorandum of Understanding on the preparatory phase of the European XFEL project yet.