Gerard Meijer new President of the Radboud University's Executive Board
Former director of the FOM Institute Rijnhuizen (now DIFFER) Prof.dr. Gerard Meijer is to be the new President of the Executive Board of Radboud University Nijmegen. He will succeed Roelof de Wijkerslooth de Weerdesteyn on 1 September 2012. 'The appointment of Gerard Meijer is an important step towards strengthening the university's international profile and reputation,' says Loek Hermans, chairman of Radboud University's supervisory board. Meijer is currently connected to FOM as a member of the Governing Board.
Meijer (1962) was appointed director of the department of Molecular Physics at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin in 2002. In recent years he also held the position of general director of the institute, for a total of four years. The Fritz Haber Institute is the oldest institute of the scientifically acclaimed Max Planck Society. Before his appointment as director of the Fritz Haber Institute, Meijer was director of the FOM Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands.
His background is in experimental physics. In June 1999, during a conference at Harvard University, he presented a milestone in physics: his Nijmegen research group was the first to decelerate moving molecules to almost standstill. He was also a pioneer of the 'buckyballs', soccer ball shaped carbon molecules with different physical properties than graphite and diamond. Under his leadership at the Fritz Haber Institute techniques are being developed to achieve full control over molecules in a gas; very important to further fundamental research. Meijer has published about 350 scientific papers that have received over 13.000 citations. He is a correspondent of the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).