Gyung-Su Lee appointed Deputy-Director General of the ITER Organization

Effective 26 October 2015, the ITER Council has appointed Gyung-Su Lee to one of two Deputy Director-General positions at the ITER Organization. 

Mr Lee will work in close coordination with the ITER Organization Director-General, Bernard Bigot; with a second Deputy Director-General—the Relations Coordinating Officer —who took up his position on 1 May; and with the heads of the seven Domestic Agencies of the ITER Members to establish a dedicated team in charge of the management of the ITER Project. More specifically, as Chief Operating Officer, he will support the Director-General in all matters related to design, construction, installation, testing, commissioning and operation, and provide technical leadership to the ITER Organization Central Team and Domestic Agency staff. 

Trained as a physicist at Seoul National University, Korea, and at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, Mr Lee holds a doctorate in plasma physics and fusion. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Director-General of the ITER Organization he was President of the National Fusion Research Institute of Korea (2008-2011). Since 2008 he has chaired the International Fusion Research Council of the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

Straight out of university, in 1986, Mr Lee entered the world of international fusion research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US. Ten years later, he was the Principal Investigator for Korea’s large superconducting tokamak KSTAR and the Director-General of Korea’s Fusion Research Center (1996-2005). 

Mr Lee has been closely associated with the ITER Project since 2007, first as Director-General of ITER Korea, then as Chairman of the ITER Management Advisory Committee and, since 2014, as Vice Chair of the ITER Council, the executive body of the ITER Organization. 

The ITER Organization is proud to welcome into its senior management team a specialist who has demonstrated, for almost three decades, an unwavering commitment to the cause of fusion energy. 

BACKGROUND TO THE PRESS RELEASE

 ITER—designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power—will be the world's largest experimental fusion facility. Fusion is the process that powers the sun and the stars: when light atomic nuclei fuse together to form heavier ones, a large amount of energy is released. Fusion research is aimed at developing a safe, abundant and environmentally responsible energy source.

ITER is also a first-of-a-kind global collaboration that brings together seven members (China, Europe, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA) representing half the world’s population and 85% of the planet’s industrial product. 

Nine-tenths of Member contributions are delivered “in-kind” in the form of buildings and components for the ITER installation. 

The ITER Project is under construction in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, in the south of France.

CONTACT

Laban Coblentz 
laban.coblentz@iter.org 
+33 4 42 17 66 17