Torsten Åkesson takes over as President of the CERN Council

At the end of the Council's December session, Enzo Iarocci handed over the reins of the Presidency to Torsten Åkesson. Professor Åkesson of the University of Lund in Sweden is a former CERN staff physicist and has been a member of the ATLAS collaboration since its infancy. He participated in the initial research for the ATLAS TRT detector and took over as leader of the project in 1995. He was also a member of the Collaboration's management team for many years and acted as its deputy spokesman from 1996 to 2004. Prior to the LHC, Professor Åkesson contributed to several particle physics experiments, first at the ISR at the beginning of the 1980s, then in the framework of the SPS heavy ion programme. In addition to his activities for ATLAS, he has acquired sound experience of particle physics management at the international level. Having been a member of the European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA), he took over as its chairman in 2005. In the same year he was also appointed co-chairman of the Council Strategy Group which drew up the strategy for the future of particle physics in Europe adopted by the Council at a special session in Lisbon in July 2006.