Christiane Alba-Simionesco

Christiane Alba-Simionesco was from January 2009 to December 2017 the Director of the French Large Scale Facility of Neutron Scattering, the Laboratoire Léon Brillouin (LLB). Before that, Prof. Alba-Simionesco was the Deputy Director of the Physical Chemistry Laboratory at the Paris-Sud University (Orsay) and coordinated a research group on experimental and statistical thermodynamics of soft condensed matter. Her background is in chemical physics and thermodynamics. She did her Ph.D. at the Pierre et Marie Curie University in Paris in 1984 and then moved to Purdue University as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Angell (Arizona State University) and afterwards to CNRS in Paris where she took up a permanent research position.

Her research topics focus on the thermodynamics, structure and dynamics of condensed phases - liquid, solid and amorphous (molecular liquids, polymers, solutions etc.) - with special attention to the glass formation or, more generally, to all metastable phases generated by high pressure or nanoscopic confinement. In the aim of extracting a molecular description of their macroscopic properties, several dedicated experimental techniques have been developed and combined in order to bridge the gap between time and space scales and improve theoretical concepts and analytical modeling with a strong contribution of neutron scattering methods. Over the years, she has developed specific research activities on nanomaterials and the consequences of geometric restriction and surface interactions on liquid properties, occasionally accompanied by patent registrations.

Throughout the years, she has served on many boards of directors and international review committees in research and research infrastructures, and on various panels for peer review of beam time proposals and advisory committees of various neutron scattering facilities. Other academic services include acting as referee for habilitation and PhD theses and various journals. Since 2014, she has been the Chairperson of the European Neutrons Scattering Association (ENSA).