Speaker Biographies
Summaries
 

Robert Aymar
Director-General of CERN
Born in 1936, R. Aymar, after studying at the Ecole Polytechnique, entered the Corps des Poudres (a former government agency involved in basic and applied research).

Following his secondment to the CEA in 1959, R. Aymar's career has been focused on fundamental research in plasma physics and its application in controlled thermonuclear fusion research.

In 1977, R. Aymar was appointed Head of the Tore Supra Project, to be built at Cadarache. He directed the Project from its conceptual design in 1977, throughout its construction up to its operation in 1988 when the first plasma was produced. In 1990, R. Aymar was appointed Director of the Direction des Sciences de la Matière of the CEA. In this position, he directed a wide range of basic research programmes - both experimental and theoretical - including astrophysics, particle, nuclear and high-energy physics, physics and chemistry of condensed matter, paleo-climatology, as well as thermonuclear fusion by magnetic confinement.

R. Aymar was appointed ITER Director by the ITER Council in July 1994, and International Team Leader in July 2001. Dr R. Aymar was appointed Director-General of CERN as of 1st January 2004 for a period of five years.
 

 
Dario Barberis
LHC ATLAS Experiment Computing Coordinator
Dario Barberis studied physics at the Universities of Milan (Italy) and Manchester (UK), where he obtained a PhD in 1982. He initially studied the production and decay properties of elementary particles containing heavy “c” and “b” quarks, using the Omega Spectrometer at CERN.

After joining ATLAS in 1996, he was first responsible for the development of the software to identify the quarks at the origin of particle jets (“b-tagging”), and later for the whole ATLAS Inner Detector software. Since 2003, Dr Barberis has been Computing Coordinator of the ATLAS experiment, with direct responsibility for the work of about 200 people who develop and operate ATLAS software and its worldwide computing environment.
 

 
Ian Bird  
Worldwide LHC Computing Grid Project Leader
Ian Bird is the LHC Computing Grid Project Leader and has line management responsibility in the CERN IT Department for Physics Computing activities. Dr Bird joined CERN in 2002 to participate in the WLCG project as Grid Deployment Area Manager, with responsibility for building up and deploying the LHC Computing Grid service.  When the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project began in 2004, he also took on the role of EGEE Operations Manager, responsible for deploying, operating and supporting the EGEE grid infrastructure. 

Prior to joining CERN, he spent six years at Jefferson Lab in Virginia, U.S., where he was head of the computing group and responsible for all aspects of computing for the laboratory.  His background and PhD are in particle physics, having spent many years coordinating the software and computing for the CERN muon experiments studying nucleon structure functions and later in the Nomad neutrino experiment.
 
 
Glen Crawford  
U.S. Department of Energy Director of the Research and Technology Division

Glen Crawford is the Director of the Research and Technology Division of the U.S. Department of Energy, where he manages Research and Technology R&D activities for the high energy physics program and supervises and coordinates the formulation, justification and preparation of the Research and Technology Division budget.

Prior to this, Dr Crawford worked for five years as a Senior Program Officer for the high energy physics program, managing budget and performance activities as well being involved in long-range planning activities. He also served three years as a Program Manager, monitoring the high-energy physics research programs at various DOE national laboratories. He received his PhD in high energy physics from Cornell University in 1991. Dr Crawford has over 200 publications in experimental high-energy physics.

 
 
Jos Engelen  
CERN Chief Scientific Officer
Jos Engelen has served as CERN’s Chief Scientific Officer and Deputy Director General since January 2004, and first joined CERN in 1979. From 1985 he has been the Staff Physicist at NIKHEF, and since 1987, a full Professor of Physics at the University of Amsterdam (on leave of absence since January 2004).   Dr Engleton studied physics at Nijmegen University (presently Radboud University). He is a member of various scientific advisory committees: Helsinki Institute of Physics; Centre de Physique des Particules Marseille; and Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Vlaanderen, Belgium. In the past has also advised the Spanish Funding Agency for High Energy Physics; he was a member of the INFN (Italy) advisory committee; he has been a referee on several occasions, among others for the Particle Physics committee of PPARC (UK); for the Fonds National Suisse; for NSF (USA); and for the Swedish Research Council, for IN2P3 (CNRS, France). He was a member of the Extended Scientific Council of DESY (Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Hamburg, Germany). He is also a member of the Council of FOM (Dutch national funding agency for physics research).
 
 
David Foster  
CERN Head of Data Networking

David Foster is head of the communications and network group at CERN, responsible for all the electronic communications of the laboratory. Educated as a physicist, he also holds an MBA and has been widely published in computer science journals and related publications. He has a wide range of professional interests including the business impact of technology, the evolution of communications systems, the interaction of technology with humanity and the psychology of organisational management.

 
Peter Jenni  
CERN ATLAS Experiment Spokesperson
Since 1995, Peter Jenni has been the elected spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration, which comprises some 2500 scientists and 169 Institutions from 37 countries. He has been a staff member at CERN since 1980, and has been involved with the LHC since the ECFA-CERN LHC workshop in 1984. He also had a hands-on involvement with test beam activities in the early phases of the calorimeter research and development projects in the early nineties. Dr Jenni received his PhD in physics from ETH-Zürich in 1976.
 
 
Bill Johnson  
Hewlett-Packard Procurve Director of Research & Development
Bill Johnson, Director of Research and Development for Hewlett-Packard ProCurve Networking Business, brings a wealth of experience in the customer application space and software product development.  In 1985 he joined HP as a development engineer in Roseville Networks Division. From 1989 to 1994 Bill held positions in Sales Development, Channel Management and Training.  In 1999, he returned to the Research and Development organization which he now manages. While not engaged in the development of networking technologies, Bill enjoys outdoor activities including skiing and fishing.
 
 
Bob Jones  
Enabling Grids for E-sciencE Project Director
Bob Jones is the Project Director of the European Commission financed EGEE project, which provides a production grid facility for e-science in Europe. Dr Jones’ experience in the grid arena includes his mandate as technical coordinator and then deputy project leader for the EU DataGrid project, the flagship grid project of the European Commission in its 5th Framework Programme. Dr Jones joined CERN in 1986 as a software developer with the Information Technology department, providing support for the physics experiments running on the LEP particle accelerator. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at Sunderland University while working at CERN and has been involved in several research projects for the LHC accelerator.
 
 
Philippe Lebrun  
CERN Accelerator Technology Department Head
Phillipe LeBrun is the Head of CERN’s Accelerator Technology department. He has more than thirty years of experience in superconducting magnets, cryogenics and particle accelerators, as well as ten years of management experience at CERN. He has earned diplomas from multiple universities and was recent awarded the title of doctor honoris causa by Wrocław University of Technology for his contributions to the development of helium cryogenics and its application to accelerator technologies. He is author or co-author of more than one hundred publications on superconducting magnets, cryogenics and accelerators.
 
 
Andreas Morsch  
LHC ALICE Experiment
Andreas Morsch studied physics at the Universities of Kaiserslautern, Saarbruecken and Kiel, where he received his PhD in 1992. As a PhD student he participated in the UA1 experiment at the CERN SpbarpS collider. From 1992 to 1995 he worked as a CERN fellow for the Accelerator Technology Division. In 1995 he joined the ALICE experiment at the LHC participating in the design and optimisation of the forward muon spectrometer. He then joined the ALICE central offline group, where today he functions as the leader of the physics application section and convener of the “High-pt and Photon” Physics Working Group.
 
 
Niko Neufeld  
LHCb Experiment
Niko Neufeld is an expert in triggering and data acquisition systems and is currently the Deputy Leader of the Online System Project in the LHCb collaboration. He has held research positions in the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and has been a staff member in the Physics Division at CERN since 2004. He earned his PhD in physics in 1999 from Vienna University of Technology.
 
 
Stephen Pawlowski  
Intel Corporation Digital Enterprise Group Chief Technology Officer
Stephen S. Pawlowski is an Intel Senior Fellow. He is the Digital Enterprise Group Chief Technology Officer and general manager for Architecture and Planning for Intel Corporation. Pawlowski joined Intel in 1982. He led the design of the first Multibus I Single Board Computer based on the 386 processor. He was a lead architect and designer for Intel’s early desktop PC and high performance server products and was the co-architect for Intel’s first P6 based server chipsets. He helped define the system bus interfaces for Intel’s P6 family processors, the Pentium® 4 processor and Itanium™ processor. He also created and led the research for Intel’s agile radio architecture for a future generation of wireless products and prior to his current assignment was the director of Corporate Technology Group's Microprocessor Technology Lab.

Pawlowski graduated from the Oregon Institute of Technology in 1982 with bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering technology and computer systems engineering technology, and received a master’s degree in computer science and engineering from the Oregon Graduate Institute in 1993. Pawlowski holds 56 patents in the area of system, and microprocessor technologies. He has received three Intel Achievement Awards.
 
 
Antti Peltomäki  
Deputy Director-General of the EC Directorate-General for the Information Society and Media
Antti Peltomäki is responsible for promoting international cooperation in information and communication technology (ICT) research and for representing the European Commission in negotiations on ICT development, the regulatory environment and the availability and accessibility of ICT-based services. The Directorate-General for the Information Society and Media manages over nine billion Euros for ICT research programmes, under the seventh research framework (2007-13). Mr Peltomäki has also been head of the Commission’s representation in Helsinki. Prior to joining the Commission in 2006, Mr Peltomäki worked in the office of the Prime Minister of Finland, initially as State Under-Secretary, then State Secretary for EU affairs.

During 1994, Mr Peltomäki was posted to the Brussels office of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) as assistant to the EFTA Parliamentary Committee. In this capacity he maintained contacts with the European Parliament and dealt with EU/EEA competition policy and legal affairs. From 1988 to 1991, he was head of the international office of the National Coalition Party (Kansallinen Kokoomus), where he developed their European policies and maintained relations with the European People’s Party. A lawyer by training, Mr Peltomäki began his career as a coordinator of international research and training courses at the Helsinki University of Technology.
 
 
Les Robertson  
Former Worldwide LHC Computing Grid Project Leader
Les Robertson has been involved in the development and management of the central computing services at CERN since 1974, taking a very active part in the evolution from supercomputers through general purpose mainframes to clusters of RISC workstations and finally (at least for now) to PC-based computing fabrics. He was involved from an early stage in planning the data handling services for the experiments that will use the LHC. He led the LHC Computing Grid project for six years from its start in 2001, with the goal of preparing the computing environment for LHC: the development and support of the common tools, libraries and frameworks required by the physics applications, the preparation of the computing facility at CERN, and the coordination and operation of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid. 
 
 
Stéphane Rousset  
Senior Vice-President, Oracle Direct and Business Operations Europe Middle East & Africa,
Oracle Corporation
Stéphane Rousset is Senior Vice-President of Oracle Direct and Business Operations for Oracle Corporation in Europe, Middle East & Africa. Oracle Direct is a 700mUSD telesales organization. Stéphane joined Oracle in 1998 and he accumulates 25 years of experience in Information Technology and Telecommunications, with a variety of management positions at Digital Equipment Corporation, AT&T International, and Global One.  

He holds Master’s Degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley.
 
 
Ed Seidel  
NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure Director
An astrophysicist by training, Edward Seidel is began his position as Director of the National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure in September 2008. Seidel is also Floating Point Systems Professor in the Louisiana State University (LSU) Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Computer Science, and is Director of the LSU Center for Computation and Technology. Seidel has previously worked for seven years as a professor at the Max-Planck-Institute for Gravitational Physics, where he founded and led numerical relativity and e-science groups. In addition to his work at LSU and the Max-Planck Institute, Seidel was a senior research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and associate professor in the Physics Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Seidel earned his doctorate from Yale University in relativistic astrophysics.
 
 
Lucas Taylor  
LHC CMS Experiment
Lucas Taylor is a senior research scientist with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. He leads the “CMS Centres Worldwide” project for distributed operations, monitoring, IT systems, and communications between CERN and remote institutes in Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

He has led many areas of CMS computing and software over the last decade, co-developed the CMS Computing Model, and created interactive graphics and analysis software. He designed software and computing systems for the Pierre Auger [Astrophysics] Observatory in Argentina and established their wide area networks. In the late 1980s and 1990’s, Lucas Taylor did fundamental particle physics research using data from the L3 and UA1 experiments at CERN’s Large Electron Positron and SppS colliders.

Lucas Taylor has a PhD in Particle Physics from Imperial College, London; the ``Diploma of Imperial College’’; a BSc in Physics from Bristol University, and the ANSI “Project Management Professional” qualification from PMI, Pennsylvania. He has been adjunct/visiting professor in Boston and La Plata, Argentina and has published more than 350 research papers in particle physics experiment, theory, data analysis, computing and software and has presented 45 papers at conferences. 
 
 
Jim Virdee  
CMS Collaboration Spokesperson
Tejinder (Jim) Virdee is Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London and Scientific Associate at the PH Department, CERN. He did his graduate studies at Imperial College on an experiment conducted at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre. He has worked on an experiment studying deep inelastic Compton scattering of real photons off of quarks and then on the UA1 proton-antiproton collider experiment, both at CERN.

After the termination of UA1 (1990), Dr. Virdee concentrated on the physics of, and experimentation at, the next generation of hadron colliders. He is one of the founding members of the Compact Muon Solenoid Collaboration (CMS) at CERN-LHC. CMS is a worldwide experiment comprising over 2500 scientists and engineers from over 180 institutes in around 40 countries. Dr. Virdee has been actively involved in all phases of the experiment. Today it is ready to digest collision data. Dr. Virdee is the Spokesperson of the CMS Collaboration and was the Deputy Spokesperson of CMS from 1993 to 2006.
 
 
Wolfgang von Rüden  
CERN Information Technology Department Head
Wolfgang von Rüden studied physics at Mainz University before coming to CERN in 1975. He worked during the first part of his career on real-time data acquisition systems. In 1990, he co-founded IBEX Computing, and returned to CERN in 1992 where he introduced industrial control systems for physics experiments. From 1994 until 1998 he was Technical Director at GSI, a German National Research Institute in Heavy Ion Physics. He then became the Leader of the Physics Data Processing Group at CERN, before being nominated as Head of the IT Department (www.cern.ch/it) at the beginning of 2003. He also leads the CERN openlab, a joint venture between CERN and leading IT companies.