John Womersley

Professor John Womersley is a Special Advisor within the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. His responsibilities include coordinating the university’s activities in space and identifying new interdisciplinary research opportunities. He chairs the Technical Advisory Committee for the IFMIF-DONES European fusion materials testing facility under construction in Spain, the Project Advisory Committee for the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Project, and until recently was a member of the Board of Fermi Research Associates which operates Fermilab on behalf of the US Department of Energy.

A graduate of Cambridge and Oxford (D. Phil. Experimental Physics), he has played a leading role in particle physics both in Europe and the United States.

He is a former Director General of the European Spallation Source (ESS), a European intergovernmental laboratory under construction in Lund, Sweden. ESS probes the atomic structure of materials and molecules using beams of neutrons, with a wide range of applications from engineering to energy to the life sciences.

Before moving to ESS, Prof. Womersley held the position of Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the United Kingdom’s funding agency for large scale science facilities and national laboratories, particle physics, nuclear physics, and astronomy. From 2013 to 2016, he chaired the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures, which advises the European Commission on priorities for research infrastructure investment.

 

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