CERN Council appoints Fabiola Gianotti for second term of office as CERN Director - General
CERN Council confirmed the Italian Fabiola Gianotti as director- general of the European particle physics laboratory, the most important in the world.
The other two scientists running for the prestigious assignment were Norbert Holtkamp and Tatsuya Nakada. Gianotti started as director- general in January 2016, taking the place of Rolf-Dieter Heuer.
Gianotti started as director-general in January 2016, taking the place of Rolf-Dieter Heuer. "I I am deeply grateful to CERN Council and to the scientific community for their renewed trust. It is a great privilege and a huge responsibility” - comments CERN Director-General, Fabiola Gianotti. "I want to thank Italy, in particular the Ministry of Education, University and Research and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, for their important support".
"INFN community is proud of the reconfirmation of Fabiola Gianotti,” - says Antonio Zoccoli, INFN President. "The history of CERN as well as the appointment of Fabiola also confirms the value of our school, demonstrating its solidity and its vitality. Our congratulations to Fabiola and best wishes from all of us for this second term! ". Italy has a special relationship with CERN, with Edoardo Amaldi among the founding fathers, going through the Nobel Prize to Carlo Rubbia, also director general, as well as Luciano Maiani, the important results of the LHC experiments, most of them directed by Italian scientists and the discovery of the Higgs boson.
Fabiola Gianotti
Gianotti has been CERN’s Director-General since 1 January 2016. She received her Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from the University of Milano in 1989 and has been a research physicist at CERN since 1994.
She was the leader of the ATLAS experiment’s collaboration from March 2009 to February 2013, including the period in which the LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. The discovery was recognised in 2013 with the Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to theorists François Englert and Peter Higgs.
Gianotti is a member of many international committees, and has received numerous prestigious awards.
She was the first woman to become the Director-General of CERN.
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