Since December 2024, Professor Thomas Nilsson is the Scientific Managing Director of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH and the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe (FAIR) GmbH . He studied Engineering Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and was a PhD student at the former TH (now TU) in Darmstadt. After that, he worked as a physics coordinator at the ISOLDE facility at the CERN research center in Switzerland. From 2005 to 2006, he worked as a researcher at TU Darmstadt and Chalmers University.

Since 2009, he has been a full professor in physics at Chalmers University and since 2017 Head of the Physics Department and part of the university management group. Professor Nilsson is also a member of the Physics Class of the prestigious Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is responsible for selecting Nobel Prize laureates. In his research, the experimental physicist focuses on how fundamental types of interactions manifest in subatomic systems, in particular in nuclei with large excesses of neutrons or protons, where exotic structures and properties emerge.

Dr. Katharina Stummeyer studied biochemistry at the Leibniz University Hannover and graduated with a PhD from the Institute of Cellular Chemistry at Hannover Medical School. She gained extensive experience in national and international science management. Her professional career began as a researcher in structural biology at the Hannover Medical School.

In 2009, she moved to Cologne as an expert at the project management agency of the Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS). She was initially responsible for initiating and managing national and international research projects as part of federal project funding. Since 2013, she has been head of the GRS project management agency. In this position, Dr. Stummeyer was responsible for the technical and administrative implementation of federal research and innovation funding programs. Another focus of her work was project support and controlling for the funding body of publicly funded large-scale projects.