Announcement

Tom Ray elected as next ESO Council president

7 December 2023

Tom Ray, Senior Professor and Director of Cosmic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Ireland, has been elected as the next president of ESO’s main governing body, the Council. He currently represents Ireland on the ESO Council and is the first Irish national to be elected ESO Council president.

“I look forward to continuing my work with the ESO Council, and am honoured to be elected as the next president,” Ray says. “ESO continues to be a leader in ground-based astronomy, and the next few years will bring exciting developments. The Extremely Large Telescope, the world’s biggest eye on the sky, is over halfway completed, while the Very Large Telescope’s new instruments and infrastructure upgrades will ensure it continues to play a key role in exploring the Universe. And ALMA, which is celebrating 10 years of discoveries this year, will be able to produce much more detailed observations of the cold Universe with its upcoming wide-band sensitivity upgrade.”

Ray began his career in radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank, UK, and received his PhD from the University of Manchester in 1981. He became a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1986, where he continues his research on star and planet formation today.

Ray has represented Ireland in the ESO Council since the country joined as a member state in 2018 and has also served on ESO’s Observing Programme Committee. Currently, he serves on the ALMA Board. Elsewhere, he has played a key role in developing instrumentation for NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) missions and has been a member of several international committees, including numerous observing time allocation committees and the Council of the Royal Irish Academy.

Ray succeeds Linda Tacconi, a senior astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, who was elected to the post in 2020. On behalf of all ESO staff, ESO’s Director General Xavier Barcons thanks Tacconi: “I would like to thank Linda for her dedication and leadership as Council President, overseeing many milestones during particularly challenging times. I look forward to working with Tom in his new role as Council President.”