Christine Darve

Christine Darve is an Engineering Scientist at the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund, Sweden. She graduated from the Institut Polytechnique de Sevenans (UTBM-France) in 1996, then she obtained her Ph.D. at Northwestern University (Illinois-USA) on the topic of helium superfluidity phenomenology.

From 1996 to 2011, she has been working at CERN and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Chicago) on the design, installation and commissioning of components for superconducting magnets and Radio-Frequency (RF) cavities, has been cryo-coordinator for the Tevatron and for the hardware commissioning of the LHC low-beta magnets, in the framework of the US-LHC collaboration. She designed and tested accelerator components like LH2 absorber for Muon Collider, the VLHC cryo-magnets cooling system and has been project engineer for the MicroBooNE experiment. She has been member of committees like the American Standard of Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the American Physical Society (APS) Forum on International Physics. 

She joined ESS Accelerator Division in December 2011, coordinating the In-Kind collaboration activities towards designing and integrating the Spoke and Elliptical cavities and cryomodules (ACCSYS/WP04 and WP05 deputy leader). Since October 2019, she has been working in the Strategy Directorate - In-Kind Management, bridging the In-Kind Partners technical contributions with the ESS expectations in compliance with the existing framework to permit First Science.

Darve has been involved (mainly on voluntary basis) in several schools and workshops to promote science without boundaries and ICT (see article). Starting in 1996 she had been the executive secretary of Physique-sans-frontieres, organizing a summer school in Sarajevo, with the participation of Robert Cailliau (co-inventor of the www) and coordinating computers donation. Since then, in 2010 she has been the main organizer of the first edition of the African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications (ASP) and is still a member of the ASP International Organizing Committee and ASP teacher. She is also the co-founder of the Nordic Particle Accelerator Program (NPAP), obtaining a European grant to prepare and implement MOOCs and summer schools in collaboration with MAXIV and five northern universities.

She has been elected APS Fellow 2016, “For sustained contribution to specification, design, construction, and operation of critical components of superconducting linear accelerators, and for leadership in expanding the reach of physics and educational outreach and dissemination of knowledge generated through large scale science facilities around the world."