Principal Deputy Director-General

Born in Furstenau, Germany in 1961, Norbert Holtkamp studied physics at the University of Berlin, and obtained his Doctorate at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1990.

After post-doctoral work at Darmstadt, and a short sabbatical at the Stanford Linear Accellerator (SLAC), he moved to Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg as head of a research group responsible for the development of a normal-conducting linear collider concept. Later, he became department head for linear accelerators.

In 1998 he moved to become a senior staff member at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), responsible for muon collider/neutrino factory research, linear colliders, VLHC, main injector commissioning, and operation.

In 2001 he became Director of the Accelerator Systems Division, Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He coordinated and led the design, construction and commissioning of the SNS accelerator (approximately half the total cost) among five participating DOE laboratories. He was responsible for the management of cost, schedule and technical coordination, and a staff of 500 people.

He was nominated as ITER Principal Deputy Director-General and Project Construction Leader in April 2006.