Tokyo

Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) has chosen its next director — Yoji Totsuka, a globally renowned neutrino scientist with wide experience of running large projects.

Totsuka is a professor at the University of Tokyo's Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and heads its Kamioka Observatory, where he has spent recent months rebuilding the Super-Kamiokande (Super-K) neutrino detector after an accident destroyed most of its sensors (see Nature 416, 118–119; 2002).

He will take over KEK — Asia's largest and most prestigious high-energy physics laboratory — next April, when Hirotaka Sugawara, its present director, returns to research at the University of Hawaii.

Totsuka is best known for providing evidence that neutrinos 'oscillate', or change from one kind to another (see Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1562–1567; 1998).

“Super-K has done half of its work,” says Totsuka, who this year turned 60, the mandatory retirement age for professors at the University of Tokyo. “I wish I could do more, but there is a time limit.”

Totsuka was the only nominee put forward by KEK's board of councillors to the science minister, who must still confirm the appointment. But the committee's recommendation has never been rejected.

Sugawara says that he will be advising Totsuka on the challenges ahead of him. “It will be the most active high-energy physics lab in the world,” predicts Sugawara.