The Governing Board, made up of representatives of the two co-owning institutions of the Institute of Corpuscular Physics, IFIC (the CSIC and the University of València), agreed at its most recent meeting to propose the members of the centre’s new management team, which was appointed with effect from 17 December.

The new Director is Sergio Pastor Carpi, Research Scientist at the CSIC, who began his scientific career with a PhD at the University of València in 1998, followed by two postdoctoral stays funded by the European Commission at SISSA in Trieste (Italy) and at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich (Germany). He joined IFIC in València with a new European postdoctoral contract, which was followed by a Ramón y Cajal fellowship, before starting his position as a Tenured Scientist at the CSIC in 2008. A member of IFIC’s AHEP group, his research field is theoretical astroparticle physics, a discipline at the crossroads of elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. In particular, Dr Pastor studies aspects related to the role of neutrinos in different astrophysical and cosmological scenarios. He has previously served as IFIC Deputy Director on two occasions (2013–2015 and 2023–2025).

The position of First Deputy Director is held by Javier Vijande Asenjo, Full Professor in the Department of Atomic, Molecular and Nuclear Physics at the University of València. After an initial academic and scientific stage at the University of Salamanca, Dr Vijande has developed his career at the University of València, where his research combines fundamental physics, advanced simulations and direct collaboration with hospitals and clinical centres. His work focuses on optimising the safety and effectiveness of key techniques in cancer treatment, such as brachytherapy and external beam radiotherapy, in close collaboration with leading institutions and organisations including the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He is the Director of the IRIMED Medical Physics Group, which is dedicated to improving and personalising radiotherapy treatments.

Meanwhile, Emma Torró Pastor, Tenured Scientist at the CSIC, is the new Technical Deputy Director of IFIC. After completing her doctoral thesis at IFIC, focused on the search for new physics in the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), she was a Research Associate at the University of Washington in Seattle (USA) and later returned to IFIC with a CIDEGENT programme excellence grant. Her research focuses on the search for new long-lived particles in both ATLAS and MATHUSLA, a proposal for a new detector for the high-luminosity phase of the LHC. Dr Torró is a member of the Young Academy of Spain and of IFIC’s Equality and Diversity Committee, among other bodies, and is strongly involved in outreach, communication and mentoring activities, aiming to normalise the role of women scientists, particularly among younger researchers.

The management team is completed by Lola Cortina Gil, who continues as Deputy Director for Innovation and Knowledge Transfer, coordinating IFIC’s Business Innovation Scientific Unit (UCIE). Dr Cortina joined the institute in 2023 as a Research Scientist at the CSIC and is on leave as a Full Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), where she worked from 2000 onwards after completing her PhD at GANIL and the University of Caen (France), as well as a postdoctoral period at the GSI centre in Darmstadt (Germany). An expert in experimental nuclear physics, she established a research line at USC on nuclear structure and dynamics using relativistic exotic beams. She led the development of the CALIFA calorimeter (2009–2017) and served as spokesperson for the R3B experiment from 2017 to 2025. She has also developed a programme in applied physics for the detection of natural radioactivity and radon, which has resulted in patents, industrial collaborations and the creation of a spin-off company.