PORTRAIT

24 March 2022 ESRFnews

At the time of this interview, you are, formally, about a month into your new roles. Have you had a chance to get to know one another? AP: We ve been together in so many meetings, there s hardly been time to form our own relationship! GMC: Yes, there s been a lot of meetings, a lot of teleworking, a lot of information to absorb and we are still settling into our new roles; we ve been very busy. But this will evolve and hopefully soon we ll have a chance to get together properly.

Annalisa, tell me about your background. You grew up in Italy, and started out as a physical chemist? AP: Yes. But I started working very early on with biologically important molecules, so then I eventually moved to the EMBL at Heidelberg in Germany, and of course that was a very biological environment. I was there for 10 years, and then I moved to London, UK, to the Medical Research Council, which again was biological, medical but also mixed. There were people from biology, physics and maths. And then I moved to Kings College London in the neurobiology department, where I was surrounded by medical doctors.

To what extent have you used synchrotrons in your work? AP: I ve used synchrotrons a lot for small-angle scattering, and a bit for X-ray diffraction. Mostly I ve worked with nuclear magnetic resonance, which is obviously a very different technique to a synchrotron, but it s run in a similar way to a synchrotron beamline. What I think is fantastic about the ESRF is that there are so many completely different techniques and so many different applications. And that really is very exciting.

Gema Martínez-Criado, the new director of research in condensed matter and physical and material sciences, and Annalisa Pastore, the new director of research in the life sciences, chemistry and soft matter, share their goals and ambitions for the ESRF.

Change from the top

GEMA MARTINEZ-CRIADO IN BRIEF BORN: 1972, Havana, Cuba. EDUCATION: Physics degree, University of Havana (1995); Master s in physics, University of Valencia, Spain (1997); PhD in physics (2002). CAREER: Post-doctoral fellowship, ESRF microprobe beamline ID22 (2002 2005); beamline scientist, ID22 (2005 2009); permanent scientist in charge, ID22/ID16B (2009 2016); senior scientist, Materials Science Institute of Madrid, CSIC, Spain (2016 2021); director of physical sciences, ESRF (2022 ).

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At ESRF there are so many completely different techniques and so many different applications. And that really is very exciting

ANNALISA PASTORE IN BRIEF BORN: 1956, Lecce, Italy. EDUCATION: Master s in chemistry, University of Naples, Italy (1981); PhD (1986), including one year at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in the group of the Nobel laureate Richard Ernst. CAREER: Biochemistry fellowship, University of Wisconsin, US (1982 1983); postdoctoral fellow, University of Oxford, UK (1986 1987); staff scientist, EMBL Heidelberg, Germany (1988 1991); group leader, structures programme (1991 1997); team leader, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, UK (1997 2013); professor, King s College London (2013 2021); University of Pavia, Italy (2015 2018); professor, Scuola Normale di Pisa, (2018 2019); director of life sciences, ESRF (2022 ).

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