The ITER Council have appointed Dr Pietro Barabaschi as the new Director-General of the ITER Organisation following the death of former Director-General Bernard Bigot in May 2022. The Council launched a search and recruitment effort to select his successor. During its recent meeting in Paris, the Council held interviews with the final candidates and unanimously appointed Dr Barabaschi. The Council also thanked Dr Eisuke Tada for his service as Interim Director-General during this transitional period. Dr Barabaschi is expected to take office in October.
Since 2009 Pietro Barabaschi, 56, has been head of the R&D department at Fusion-for-Energy (F4E), the European Joint Undertaking responsible for delivering European components to the ITER and Broader Approach Fusion international projects. He has been specifically responsible for the European contributions to the three projects implemented in the frame of the Broader Approach Agreement between Euratom and the government of Japan: JT60SA (a large tokamak), IFMIF/EVEDA (a large linear accelerator) and IFERC (a joint EU/JA R&D centre).
During 2015, and again in 2022, he operated as Acting Director of F4E being responsible for the overall management of the organisation, for the project management infrastructure and for the implementation of reform measures implemented in the frame of the Iter Management. Before joining F4E and until early 2006 he was the deputy to the Project Leader and head of the Design Integration Division of the Iter International Team at the Munich Joint Work Site.
Soon after the university studies in Electrical Engineering he joined the JET Project at Culham in the UK, where he worked in the machine development department.
Image: Dr Pietro Barabaschi, the new Director-General of the ITER Organisation (courtesy of Fusion-for-Energy)
