New CEO for the Diamond Light Source
18.09.2023 - Professor Gianluigi Botton has been appointed as the new chief executive officer for the UK’s national synchrotron.
Professor Botton joins Diamond from the Canadian Light Source where he has been its Science Director since May 2019. He will take up his position in October.
He is a renowned expert in microscopy and spectroscopy with an impressive track record in research and funding, having secured more than $ 50 M as principal investigator and $ 90 M as a co-investigator and has more than 350 peer-reviewed publications.
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Professor Gianluigi Botton (Source: Diamond Light Source)
His work has been cited more than 34,000 times. Over the course of his highly successful career, Botton has been awarded the Microbeam Analysis Society’s Presidential Award (2020) and the Metal Physics Award of the Canadian Materials Science Conference (2017); he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2018) and Fellow of the Microscopy Society of America (2014).
Professor Sir Adrian Smith, chairman of the Diamond board of directors says: “We are delighted that Gianluigi is joining our team. He has a wealth of experience, not just as a scientific leader, but has first-hand experience of delivering complex experiments for users, especially in the key area of imaging, where he specializes in using advanced microscopy and spectroscopy techniques to examine materials at the atomic scale and to develop more energy-efficient materials for applications such as batteries, fuel cells and lighting applications. We believe his input will be invaluable as we now move into the detailed planning and delivery for Diamond-II.”
Prior to joining the Canadian Light Source, Gianluigi established the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy (CCEM), a national facility for ultrahigh resolution microscopy as the scientific director from the start of operations in 2008 until 2019.
Gianluigi is also professor in the department of materials science and engineering at McMaster University where he currently holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair. He earned a PhD in materials engineering from École Polytechnique de Montréal and has held positions as both an NSERC post-doctoral fellow and senior research associate at Cambridge University in England where he spent five years. He has also served as a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada.
