Florin Buzatu has been Director-General of the Institute of Atomic Physics (IFA), Măgurele-Bucharest, Romania, since 2008. Founded in 1956, IFA is the iconic institute of Romanian physics research, from which most of Romania’s current national institutes for R&D in physics and related areas emerged in 1996. Since that time, IFA has been the funding agency for Romania’s participation in the scientific programmes of European organisations and research infrastructures in the field: EURATOM (1999), F4E (2010), CERN (2011) and FAIR (2014). IFA is also responsible for the national funding programme for the preparation and running of experiments at ELI-NP (2014), the Nuclear Physics pillar – under development at Măgurele – of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), the European high-power laser research facility. Florin Buzatu was the coordinator of Romania’s application to host ELI during the preparatory phase of the ESFRI project (2008-2010). He has represented Romania at the CERN Council and Finance Committee since 2016, shortly after Romania became a Member State of CERN; he was also adviser to the country’s delegation during the phase of Romania’s pre-accession to full CERN membership (2010-2016).

Florin Buzatu graduated from the Faculty of Physics of the University of Bucharest, with a specialisation in nuclear physics, in 1982. He obtained his PhD in theoretical physics from IFA in 1994. He was a member of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Horia Hulubei National Institute for R&D in Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH, Măgurele-Bucharest) for 32 years (1990-2022), a scientific researcher at JINR, Dubna (1991-1996), and a postdoctoral fellow and research associate at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, US (1998-2001). Before taking up his current position at IFA, he was the Scientific Director of IFIN-HH (2002-2004, 2005-2008), where he coordinated Romania’s application for CERN membership (2006-2007).