As FRIB Experimental Systems Division director, Georg Bollen ensures user success in research at FRIB through experiment support and by expanding scientific opportunities with new scientific instrumentation, often realized with broad user community engagement.
The FRIB Experimental Systems Division is responsible for operating experimental areas, laboratory-supported scientific instrumentation, and supporting users with their own equipment. The division also delivers FRIB's unique very low-energy rare isotope beams through beam stopping and preparation for reacceleration, conducts radiation transport calculations for safe facility operation, develops and supports scientific data acquisition, and develops and produces advanced detector systems for beam diagnostics and spectrometers.
Georg has directed the initial design, fabrication, and installation of FRIB’s beam production facilities that include the production target, beam dump, fragment separator, secondary beam-transport system, beam-stopping systems, and experimental areas. Georg has nearly 30 years of experience in leading multi-institution collaborations to conceptualize, design, build, and operate complex nuclear science equipment and experiments. He has extensive experience in Europe and North America partnering with users to define goals and achieve user objectives. He is prominent in the community of scientists conducting research and development for rare isotope beam capabilities, and he is renowned for pioneering precision mass measurements of rare isotopes using ion traps.
Georg is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2006) and the recipient of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Senior Scientist Medal in Fundamental Metrology (2008) and the German Society of Mass Spectrometry Mattauch-Herzog Award (1991).
Georg earned a PhD in atomic and nuclear physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 1989. He held research positions at the university in Mainz, GSI Darmstadt, an ISOLDE physics group leader position at CERN, and a faculty position at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He joined MSU faculty in 2000 in the Department of Physics and has been a University Distinguished Professor since 2013.