Miguel Ángel García Aranda. © Mónica Díaz López

Miguel Ángel García Aranda will replace Prof. Bertrand Girard, who has held the position for the period 2014-2017. The appointment has taken place in the 67th Council meeting celebrated at Lund, last 26th and 27th of June, and will come into effect the first of January of 2018. Prof. García ArandaHe has been vice-president of the ESRF Council for four years (2014-2017).

Miguel Ángel García Aranda, PhD in Chemistry at the University of Málaga, is Professor at the same university. His scientific expertise is focused on diffraction and imaging studies of industrially relevant materials like eco-cements or ceramic pigments. Since January 2013, he is the Scientific Director of the ALBA Synchrotron, with a secondment of the University, coordinating the user program for all techniques available at ALBA, designing the future scientific use of the facility and managing a group of more than 65 scientists and technologists from 15 countries.

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is the first third generation synchrotron facility, located in Grenoble (France). It hosts 43 experimental stations and receives overabout 7,000 users visits per year. This facility is supported by 22 partner nations, one of them being Spain with 4% the shares. Nowadays, the ESRF is developing the Phase-II of its Upgrade Programme (150 million € investment), so-called ESRF-EBS, or Extremely Brilliant Source Project (150 million € new investment), for producing even more brilliant, coherent and stable hard X-ray beams.