Federico Boscherini, Professor of Physics at the Physics and Astronomy Department of the University of Bologna, has been elected as the new Chair of the Council of the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (European XFEL, www.xfel.eu). The appointment starts from July 2022 for a first two year period.

The European XFEL is a world-leading large scale research facility, member of EIROforum (www.eiroforum.org), an intergovernmental association of eight of the leading European large scale infrastructures. Thanks to a 1.7 km long, 17.5 GeV linear electron accelerator based on superconducting resonant cavities and the Self Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) process taking place in very long undulator magnet arrays, high repetition rate ultrashort X-ray flashes with a brilliance that is a billion times higher than that of the best conventional synchrotron X-ray radiation sources are produced. The European XFEL is opening up areas of research from physics to structural biology that were previously inaccessible. Using the X-ray flashes of the European XFEL since the start of its operation in mid-2017, scientists from all over the world are able to map the atomic details of viruses, decipher the molecular composition of cells, take three-dimensional images of the nanoworld, film chemical reactions on the femtosecond time scale and study processes such as those occurring deep inside planets and in extreme conditions of temperature, pressure and applied magnetic field.

The European XFEL is located in the metropolitan area of Hamburg, Germany, and has a long-standing collaboration agreement with DESY for the accelerator operation. It is organized as a non-profit company with limited liability under German private law (GmbH) that is publicly funded (total construction budget: 1.54 B€; operation budget for 2022: 141 M€) through its international shareholders from 12 European countries. The shareholders’ assembly, the so-called Council, is the supreme organ of the European XFEL GmbH, which decides on all important issues of the company (like the annual financial statement and the annual operation budget) and important personnel matters as well as the further development of the facility. The Council meets at least three times a year and is led by a Chair and a Vice-Chair, who are elected from the Council delegations for a total of up to two terms, not exceeding two years each, and who, upon election, leave their delegations and become supra partes.

Federico Boscherini