Geneva, 20 September 2012. CERN¹ Council today elected Professor Agnieszka Zalewska as its 21st President for a period of one year renewable twice, with a mandate starting on 1 January 2013. Professor Zalewska takes over from Michel Spiro who comes to the conclusion of his three-year term at the end of December.

Geneva, 20 September 2012. CERN¹ Council today elected Professor Agnieszka Zalewska as its 21st President for a period of one year renewable twice, with a mandate starting on 1 January 2013. Professor Zalewska takes over from Michel Spiro who comes to the conclusion of his three-year term at the end of December.

“I feel particularly honoured to have presided over the CERN Council through a period that has seen the first major results from the LHC,” said Professor Spiro. “But we are just at the start, so while warmly thanking CERN management and personnel for the last three years, I’d like to wish Professor Zalewska all the very best as the LHC adventure continues to unfold.”

Agnieszka Zalewska is a Professor at the H. Niewodniczański Institute of High Energy Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She has a distinguished career in particle physics and a long association with CERN. She received her doctorate in 1975 from the Jagellonian University, Krakow, for work carried out on bubble chamber data from an experiment at CERN. Later, she worked on the DELPHI experiment at CERN’s Large Electron Positron collider, LEP, where she played an important role in the development of silicon tracking detectors. Since 2000, she has been involved with neutrino physics through the ICARUS experiment at Italy’s Gran Sasso National Laboratory, which studies a neutrino beam sent through the Earth from CERN, and has also been involved with feasibility studies for an underground laboratory in Poland. She has been a member of several CERN committees, and has been the Polish scientific delegate to the CERN Council since January 2010.

“The coming years will be fascinating, but demanding, as we prepare the LHC for running at higher energies and implement the updated European Strategy for Particle Physics,” said Zalewska. “CERN and its Council will become my only priority, and I would like to thank the Council members and outgoing President for the confidence they have placed in me.”

About the CERN Council

1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Israel and Serbia are Associate Members in the pre-stage to Membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.