Tag: new director

Olof Karis becomes Director for MAX IV

Olof Karis becomes Director for MAX IV

Olof Karis, former Interim Director of MAX IV, has been appointed as the Director of MAX IV following an open recruitment process and the recommendation of the MAX IV Board. The decision was made by the Vice-Chancellor of Lund University, the host university for MAX IV.

MAX IV, Sweden’s synchrotron, is fully operational with 16 beamlines and 1400 users yearly from academia and industry. Olof Karis has led MAX IV as Interim Director since March 2022, through finishing the Strategic Plan for 2023–2032 and a positive review by the Swedish Research Council in November. He has also navigated challenges related to increasing operating costs.

“I am enthusiastic about the possibility of continuing to work for MAX IV. It is a fantastic facility with great people. My focus for the near future is to make a case for longer-term funding of MAX IV. We need stability to continue facilitating research that keeps our society strong in facing future challenges,” says Karis.

In collaboration with the scientific community, MAX IV aims to continuously develop existing beamlines and construct several complementary ones in the next decade to make optimal use of already-made investments in the infrastructure.

“The research conducted by our users at MAX IV benefits the community in many areas, with an impact on circular economy and environment, sustainable energy, and health. Our technical advancements with the MAX IV synchrotron are transformative, enabling us to see details we’ve never been able to before. We can approach what has previously been unsolvable problems,” concludes Karis.

Read more on the MAX IV website

Dimitri Argyriou Named Next Director of Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source

Dimitri Argyriou Named Next Director of Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source

Dimitri Argyriou, an accomplished physicist and Associate Director for In-Kind Management at the European Spallation Source, has been selected to serve as the next director of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). His appointment is expected to begin this June. The announcement follows an international search.

“I am very pleased that Dimitri is joining us to become the next director of the Advanced Light Source,” said Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell. “With his expertise and leadership experience at some of the world’s leading research laboratories, he is well suited to ensure the ALS and its community will continue to advance science for the benefit of society.”

The ALS is an X-ray synchrotron scientific user facility that produces extremely bright X-ray, infrared, and extreme ultraviolet light for more than 1,800 visiting scientists each year. Up to 40 experiments can be performed simultaneously using the synchrotron, resulting in nearly 900 peer-reviewed scientific articles each year across a range of fields, from chemistry and materials sciences to biology and environmental sciences.

In addition, the ALS is undergoing a major upgrade, called ALS-U, which will take advantage of state-of-the-art technologies to endow the ALS with light more than 100 times brighter than the facility offers today, opening the door to new realms of scientific study and keeping the ALS’s world-leading capabilities.

Read more on the ALS website

Image: Dimitri Argyriou

Credit: European Spallation Source