New SLAC director

Last month Persis Drell became the new director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Since Jonathan Dorfan’s retirement from that post in September, Drell had been serving as SLAC’s acting director. She was a professor of physics at Cornell University for 14 years before going to SLAC in 2002 to be director of the lab’s research division. As a high-energy-physics experimenter at Cornell, she had been deputy director of the university’s laboratory for nuclear studies and chair of its synchrotronradiation committee.

Her father, Stanford particle theorist Sidney Drell, served for many years as SLAC’s deputy director. As the fourth director in the laboratory’s illustrious 45-year history, she takes up her post at a time of transition. For most of its history, SLAC was concerned mostly with particle physics. But now its centerpiece three-kilometer-long linear accelerator, which used to provide particle physicists with high-energy electrons and positrons, will be serving biologists and materials scientists as the injector for the world’s first x-ray free-electron-laser facility.

The role of astrophysics at SLAC is also growing. The lab hosts the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and the team that designed and will run the soon-to-be launched GLAST gamma-ray orbiter. “My goal,” says Drell, “is to position the laboratory to make a smooth transition to these exciting future programs while continuing the lab’s tradition of outstanding scientific achievement.”