Pietro Barabaschi, F4E Acting Director. ©F4E
The ITER Council, the governing body comprising of the seven parties contributing to the international fusion experiment, has appointed Pietro Barabaschi as Director-General of ITER Organization.
Pietro Barabaschi stated: “I’m conscious of the immense responsibility that I am taking on and feel privileged for having been selected through an intensive competitive selection process. I wish to thank the ITER Council for this honour. The first 15 years of my career have been dedicated to ITER and I now hope to be able to take on what my predecessors have done towards our common objective. I will make a priority to improve the integration of ITER Organization and Domestic Agencies, both essential elements of the ITER Project, now and even more in the forthcoming phases of commissioning of ITER.”
Pietro Barabaschi has been working since 2009 in Fusion for Energy (F4E), the European Union organisation responsible for Europe’s contribution to ITER, and the Broader Approach international fusion projects, as Head of the Broader Approach Programme and Delivery. He has been managing the Department overviewing the European contributions to three projects, resulting from the agreement between Euratom and Japan: JT-60SA (the biggest tokamak device until ITER begins operations), IFMIF/EVEDA (a large linear accelerator) and IFERC (an R&D centre set up jointly by the two parties). During 2015, and again in 2022, he was appointed as Acting Director of F4E being responsible for the overall management of the organisation, the project management infrastructure, and the implementation of reform measures.
Before joining F4E, and until early 2006, he was 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 his university studies in Electrical Engineering he joined the JET Project, Culham, UK, where he worked in the Department of Machine Development.
Pietro Barabaschi, 56, has always been working in the field of R&D and construction of research facilities to make fusion a viable energy source.
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