Joël Mesot becomes director at PSI
Joël Mesot, an internationally acknowledged solid-state physicist, has become the new director of the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI). His term of office began on 1 August, the Swiss national "birthday", in the year that PSI is celebrating its 20th anniversary. He takes over from the interim director, Martin Jermann (CERN Courier October 2007 p37).
Mesot was elected to the post by the Swiss Federal Council at the end of 2007. He was also elected to a joint professorship in physics at the two Swiss federal polytechnics, ETH-Zurich and EPF-Lausanne, by the ETH Council in April 2008.
Mesot’s career in solid-state physics, which started with neutron scattering at ETH-Zurich/PSI and the Institut Laue-Langevin, continued with synchrotron radiation studies while a guest scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.
His work, with an emphasis on materials with unusual electronic properties, has made him well known in the fields of neutron scattering and photoelectron spectroscopy in connection with high-temperature superconductivity. He holds two patents associated with his research, and in 2002 was awarded the European Science Foundation’s Latsis Prize for outstanding and innovative contributions in a selected field of European research.
Since December 2004 he has been head of the Laboratory of Neutron Scattering of PSI and ETH-Zurich, based at the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source (SINQ) at PSI.
Mesot will take over an active multidisciplinary "user laboratory" with world-class research facilities for material science, elementary particle physics, biology, medical science and energy and environmental research – a legacy promoted by previous directors. This, together with the foreseen realization of a compact X-ray free-electron laser at PSI, will guarantee an exciting and ambitious challenge for the next decade.
French research minister comes to CERN
On 6 June Valérie Pécresse, the French minister for higher education and research, visited CERN. The main objective of the visit was to obtain input on the organization of large research infrastructures, based on information concerning CERN’s administrative and scientific configuration and the experiment collaborations.
After a tour of the CMS experiment and the LHC tunnel, with the president of the French National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer, the delegation took part in a round-table discussion attended by a dozen physicists. This included the director-general, project leaders, deputy spokespeople, members of the experiments, CERN personnel and users. The minister commented that fields of biomedical research, such as Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, could benefit from pooling resources at the European level following CERN’s example.