CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has selected Italian physicist, Dr Fabiola Gianotti, as the organisation's next Director-General at its 173rd Closed Session. The appointment will be formalised at the December session of the Council, and Dr Gianotti's mandate will begin on January 1, 2016 and run for a period of five years.
Dr Gianotti was leader of the ATLAS experiment collaboration from March 2009 to February 2013, covering the period in which the LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS announced the long-awaited discovery of the so-called Higgs boson, recognised by the award of the Nobel Prize to François Englert and Peter Higgs in 2013. She is a member of many international committees, and has received many prestigious awards. She will be the first woman to hold the position of CERN Director-General.
Headquarterd in Geneva, CERN is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a Candidate for Accession. Serbia is an Associate Member in the pre-stage to Membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer Status.
