Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Collaboration Spokespersons

Karl-Heinz Kampert (Spokesperson) and Jim Matthews (Co-Spokesperson

Spokespersons
Karl-Heinz Kampert (left) and James Matthews (right) were elected Spokesperson and Co-Spokesperson respectively in November 2010.

Spokesperson Dr. Karl-Heinz Kampert is Professor of Physics and the Chair of Particle Astrophysics at Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany. His main research interests are cosmic rays and neutrino physics at the Pierre Auger Observatory, the IceCube project, and KASCADE/GRANDE. In each of these he was responsible for the design and construction of significant hardware components.

His previous post was a professor at the University of Karlsruhe and the Karlsruhe Research Center, and at the University of Münster. Before working in particle astrophysics, he conducted studies as a postdoctoral scientist on high energy heavy ion reactions. He has worked at CERN, Brookhaven, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The Co-Spokesperson is James Matthews, Professor of Physics at Louisiana State University and at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1984. He was on the faculty of the University of Michigan from 1986 to 1997; then he moved to Louisiana as part of the Louisiana Board of Regents Joint Faculty Appointment Program.

He has worked on experimental searches for proton decay, TeV gamma rays at Haleakala, and on the CASA-MIA air shower experiment. He has been a part of the Auger Project since its inception in 1992, editing the Design Report in 1995. In Auger, he has worked on shower simulations, surface detector designs, construction of surface detectors, analysis of detector waveforms, and fluorescence detector calibration systems. He was chair of the Publications Committee from 2005 to 2010.

Biographies of previous spokespersons