Harald Reichert, Director of Research in Physical Sciences

German, Doctor in physics, University of Munich, 1995.

Harald Reichert is Director of Research in Physical Sciences at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). He holds a doctorate in Physics from the University of Munich obtained in 1995 and has been performing research in condensed matter with synchrotron radiation since then. After graduation he went first to the University of Houston (USA) on a Feodor-Lynen Fellowship before moving briefly to the University of Wuppertal (Germany) and finally to a position at the Max Planck Institute for Metal Research in Stuttgart (Germany) where he spent 11 years developing methods for the study of deeply buried interfaces. In the past 15 years he has become one of the leading experts for the exploitation of high energy X-rays for materials science including the development of dedicated instrumentation. In 2002, he received the Walter-Schottky-Award for Solid State Physics from the German Physical Society.

Harald joined the ESRF in 2009 as Director of Research. His mandate at the ESRF includes responsibility for the renewal of the beamline portfolio of the ESRF and the development of a long-term scientific strategy for the facility in the context of an upgrade of the source to a near diffraction limited light source. He is a member of numerous advisory bodies for X-ray science around the world.