ALICE enters 2026 with a newly appointed management team, led by Kai Schweda as Spokesperson, succeeding Marco van Leeuwen. The new team includes Deputy Spokespersons Andrea Dainese and Anthony Robert Timmins. The ALICE collaboration expresses its sincere thanks to Marco, together with his Deputies Bedangadas Mohanty and Kai Schweda, for their strong leadership and lasting contributions to the experiment.
ALICE enters the new year with a new management team, steering the collaboration through a key period of detector operation, data analysis, and major upgrades. From January 2026 onward, Kai Schweda, senior scientist at the GSI Helmholtz Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, has assumed the role of ALICE spokesperson, succeeding Marco van Leeuwen. Elected by the ALICE Collaboration Board, Kai will lead the collaboration for the next three years. Kai comes to the position after serving as ALICE Deputy Spokesperson for the last three years. The new management team includes Deputy Spokespersons Andrea Dainese, research director at INFN Padova, Italy, and Anthony Robert Timmins, professor at the University of Houston, Texas, USA.
The team will have new challenges ahead of them in terms of the efficient Run 3 data taking in 2026, Run 3 data analysis, publications of new results, LS3 activities, including installation of the ITS3 and FoCal detectors, and, more crucially, upgrading ALICE to the next level through the next-generation ALICE 3 experiment for LHC Run 5.
Kai Schweda (ALICE Spokesperson, 2026-2028): Kai is a senior scientist at the GSI Helmholtz Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, and an associate professor at the University of Heidelberg. He completed his doctorate in nuclear physics at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt (now Technical University of Darmstadt), followed by a postdoctoral appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA, with the STAR experiment at RHIC. He contributed to the development of the Heavy-Flavor Tracker in STAR. In 2005, he joined the ALICE Collaboration as a Helmholtz Young Investigator at the University of Heidelberg. He led the implementation of the detector control system for the ALICE Transition Radiation detector and held leading roles in the TRD and TPC projects. He was Chair of the ALICE Service Work Board for three years prior to assuming the role of ALICE Deputy Spokesperson in 2023.
Andrea Dainese (ALICE Deputy Spokesperson, 2026-2028): Andrea is the research director at INFN, Padova, Italy. He joined ALICE as a PhD student in 2000. Within ALICE, he has held several prominent roles over the years, including Convener of the Heavy-Flavour Physics Working Group, Physics Coordinator (2020-2022), and Upgrade Coordinator (2023-2025). In the context of the ALICE 3 programme, he contributed to shaping the scientific vision, physics case, and the overall architecture of the experiment. He also served as co-convener for Strong Interactions in the European Strategy for Particle Physics 2026.
Anthony Timmins (ALICE Deputy Spokesperson, 2026-2028): Anthony is a professor at the University of Houston, Texas, USA. He received his PhD in 2008 from the University of Birmingham, where he worked on the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He subsequently joined Wayne State University as a postdoctoral fellow and became a member of the ALICE collaboration in 2010. Since joining ALICE, he has held several key roles, including Convenor of the Correlations and Fluctuations Physics Working Group (2016-2018), co-chair of the ALICE review paper group (2021-2024), and coordinator for US ALICE institutes (2023-2025).