XFEL: European XFEL Council elects new Chair and Vice Chair

At its meeting on 25 and 26 June, the European XFEL Council appointed a new Chair and Vice Chair. The shareholders voted for Martin Meedom Nielsen from the Technical University of Denmark in Kongens Lyngby as Chairman, and Lars Börjesson from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, as Vice Chairman. Both will serve two-year terms. The European XFEL Council is the supreme organ of the company, functioning as the shareholder assembly and deciding on important issues of company policy.

European XFEL Managing Directors Massimo Altarelli and Claudia Burger congratulated the newly elected Chair and Vice Chair. “We are looking forward to working with Martin and Lars to move our exciting project further towards completion. Both are experienced X-ray scientists whose input will help us build a facility that will open up unique research opportunities to our future users.”

Nielsen is a professor of physics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). As a leading scientist at DTU’s Ultrafast Materials Physics – Molecular Movies group, one of his research interests is science at free-electron lasers. His group has pioneered multiple methods in time-resolved structural studies of chemical reactions and molecules in solution.

Börjesson is Vice President of Chalmers University, and a professor leading a research team in condensed matter physics utilising neutron and X-ray scattering. He is also the Chairman of the European Spallation Source (ESS) Steering Committee and until recently was the Chairman of the Board of the MAX IV Laboratory, a high-brilliance synchrotron light source that is under construction next to ESS in Lund.

Massimo Altarelli and Claudia Burger thanked the outgoing Chair Robert Feidenhans’l and Vice Chair Pavol Sovák for their dedicated work and commitment in the past years. “It was a great pleasure to work with you, and your deep knowledge and great experience of X-ray science was very highly valued”, said Altarelli.

Feidenhans’l and Sovák were appointed in 2010 and were not eligible for re-election. Feidenhans’l is a professor of Nanophysics and the head of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. He is internationally recognized as an experimental surface physicist developing new methods and X-ray techniques for the exploration of the nanoworld.

Sovák is a professor and vice rector at P. J. Šafárik University in Košice, Slovak Republic. His research interests include observing relationships between structure and magnetic properties of amorphous and nanocrystalline soft magnetic materials using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray techniques.