Norbert Holtkamp

About

Norbert Holtkamp is a Science Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Holtkamp is also a professor of particle physics and astrophysics and of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University

At Stanford, he was SLAC’s deputy laboratory director from 2014 to 2023, leading the conception and implementation of multilaboratory partnerships for several Department of Energy and National Science Foundation projects. Since 2019 he has led SLAC’s $1.1 billion LCLS-II Free Electron Laser construction project, built by five US national laboratories. He also managed the laboratory’s overall risk portfolio, which included more than $2.5 billion worth of construction on the SLAC site. He first joined SLAC in 2010 as the associate laboratory director for the accelerator directorate.

In 2006, he was nominated principal deputy director of ITER, an international organization founded in France with seven members—the European Union (through Euratom), China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States—collaborating on a 20-billion-Euro project to build the world's largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion devise. From 2001 to 2006, Holtkamp served as the director of the Accelerator Systems Division for the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the world’s most powerful pulsed neutron source, built by a collaboration of six Department of Energy national laboratories. He held various leadership positions on a variety of US and international science infrastructure projects at Fermi National Accelerator Lab and Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany. He chaired the Particle Accelerator Conference in 2005 and the Linac Conference in 2006. In June 2008 he received the Gersh Budker Prize of the European Physical Society.

Holtkamp has an MS-equivalent degree in physics from the University of Berlin and a PhD in physics from the Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany. His interests include science applications, technology transfer, and the value and future of international science collaborations.