The European Spallation Source Appoints John Womersley Director General
John Womersley begins his appointment 1 November 2016 taking over from Jim Yeck who with great success has carried through the preliminary design phase and led ESS into construction of the ESS facility.
Today John Womersley is CEO in the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in Great Britain and is a leading figure within the European cooperation on research infrastructure. He is also chair of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).
ESS has close to 400 employees and more than 40 partner institutions from 15 counties participate in the construction. The construction of ESS will cost approximately DKK 15 billions – hereof Denmark contributes with DKK 2 billions as co-host. As co-host Denmark is deeply involved in the development of ESS. For example, several Danish research environments are helping to develop and build the facility and a data centre has been established on the North Campus of the University of Copenhagen to help researchers analyse and interpret data from experiments carried out at the ESS facility in Lund.
About the ESS
- ESS is a neutron scattering facility, which functions as an extremely large and very advanced microscope.
- ESS will allow researchers to take very precise images and film sequences of structures and processes that are otherwise hidden under the surface of materials and could be compared with X-ray technology.
- ESS will produce the first neutrons in 2019 and is expected to be fully completed by 2025.
- It is expected that between 2000 and 3000 researchers will visit the ESS annually to carry out experiments.
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