Alexander (Sasha) Zholents has been named Director of the Argonne Accelerator Systems Division of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), and Chris Jacobsen has been named an Associate Division Director of the Argonne X-ray Science Division (XSD), also of the APS.

Zholents received his Ph.D. degree at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics (BINP). He remained at BINP, where he designed and commissioned electron-positron storage rings, ultimately achieving the rank of "Leading Scientist" in 1989. He had a visiting position at the CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research high-energy physics laboratory, before accepting a position at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1992. Zholents is known for his innovative ideas on ultrafast X-ray sources and was the inventor of both the laser pulse-slicing scheme—implemented at the Advanced Light Source, BESSY and the Swiss Light Source—and the radio-frequency pulse slicing approach plays an important role in the proposed APS Upgrade. “We plan to usher in a new era of discovery and continue to provide outstanding research opportunities,” Zholents said.

Jacobsen was most recently a professor of astronomy and physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from St. Olaf College in Minnesota and his Ph.D. degree in physics from State University of New York at Stony Brook. He, together with fellow XSD Associate Division Directors George Srajer and Mark Beno round out a new XSD management team led by recently-appointed XSD Division Director Linda Young.

“I am delighted that we have attracted two more outstanding leaders to join the APS as we prepare for the opportunities and challenges of the next decade,” said Murray Gibson, Argonne Associate laboratory Director for Photon Sciences.