Dr Nigel Lockyer

Dr Nigel Lockyer has been appointed the director of the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and will assume his duties September 3. Lockyer emerged as the top candidate following a nine-month international search led by Norman Augustine, retired CEO of Lockheed Martin and chair of the committee that produced the influential Rising Above the Gathering Storm report in 2005. Lockyer is currently director of Vancouver-based TRIUMF, Canada's national lab for particle and accelerator physics, a position he has held since 2007. He is also a professor of physics at the Univ of British Columbia. The Fermi laboratory is a government-owned, company-operated (GoCO) facility, operated by the Univ of Chicago and the University Research Alliance. It is the only lab in the US solely dedicated to particle physics. In addition to directing Fermilab's operations, he will oversee a new R&D facility Fermi is building in partnership with the State of Illinois, dedicated to accelerating the transfer of particle physics technologies into the medicine, energy and manufacturing sectors. Lockyer is very familiar with Fermilab having conducted research there as a guest and visiting scientist on several occasions. Born in Scotland, Lockyer received his BSc from York Univ, his PhD from Ohio State Univ and was a postdoctoral fellow at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford Univ. He spent 23 years at the Univ of Pennsylvania before joining TRIUMF. At Fermilab, Lockyer replaces Dr Piermaria Oddone who is stepping down after eight years. Interim director is Jack Anderson Fermilab's COO. The lab has an annual budget of $370 million (down from $400 million) and 1,700 staff (down from 2,200)....