Jonathan Bagger, the vice provost for graduate and postdoctoral programs and special projects, has been appointed as the next director of TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics.
Bagger, who is also the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Physics and Astronomy, will begin his six-year term at the Vancouver-based lab on July 1.
“It’s an exciting opportunity for me,” Bagger said. “The laboratory really pulls together a nice combination of doing important, fundamental physics [and] also connecting to society.”
In an email to The News-Letter, TRIUMF’s director of communications Tim Meyer wrote that the organization was impressed by Bagger’s extensive experience working both in science and in the administration.
“Jon Bagger’s sterling reputation as a scientist and his demonstrated success not only as an international statesman for particle physics but also as a leader of the Johns Hopkins University caught the committee’s attention,” Meyer wrote. “The director of a laboratory like TRIUMF must be someone who has a unique combination of leadership, vision and scientific accomplishment. TRIUMF and Canada are proud to attract someone of Professor Bagger’s calibre [sic] and reputation and we look forward to a fruitful and fantastic future together.”
Provost Robert Lieberman said that he believes the position at TRIUMF will be a terrific next step for Bagger’s career; however, he said that his office will be dramatically impacted by Bagger’s departure.
“These are extremely big shoes to fill,” Lieberman said. “He’s just such a great source of institutional knowledge and wisdom and thoughtful advice. Having him as a colleague in this office has been invaluable.”
Bagger said that while he did not originally plan to leave Hopkins, where he has been a faculty member since 1989, the opportunity to lead TRIUMF was too exciting to pass up.
“[When] a member of the search committee contacted me and asked if I was interested, at first I thought ‘that’s crazy,’” Bagger said. “Over time the more I thought about it, the more sense it actually made.”
Bagger said that his experiences as a vice provost working with the different schools within the University will help him lead TRIUMF, which is a collective organization funded by and attached to a consortium of 18 major Canadian universities.
“At Johns Hopkins, I’ve had to learn how to align the interests of different schools and centers and institutes, each of which has its own culture,” Bagger said. “In some ways, [leading TRIUMF is] very similar to being in the Provost’s office, where you’re trying to pull together the different schools of the university in a common cause.”
In addition to serving as a vice provost and teaching, Bagger has also chaired the Physics and Astronomy Department in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Bagger said that some of his fondest memories from his tenure include working with the Space Telescope Science Institute on campus, which houses the Hubble Space Telescope science mission.
“The [astronomy] department, the space telescope and I all grew up together here,” Bagger said. “Watching the relations develop between Johns Hopkins and [the] space telescope and furthering the agenda [of the department as its chair] are really proud memories of mine.”
In addition to preparing for the move to Vancouver, Bagger said that he will remain fully invested in the projects he is currently working on before wrapping up his time at the University.
Projects that Bagger wants to see through in the next three months include the launch of a high-performance computing center in conjunction with the University of Maryland, an expansion of space studies — including the study of life on other plants and the overall condition of Earth — in the physics and astronomy department and institutional improvements to Ph.D. programs University-wide.
Lieberman said that his office has just started the search process to find Bagger’s replacement.
“We’ll almost certainly bring someone who’s currently on the Johns Hopkins faculty to replace Jon, but Jon will be very hard to replace,” Lieberman said.
