BBC: Fabiola Gianotti, who has served as project leader of the LHC's Atlas collaboration since 2009, has been chosen by CERN's managing council to take over the directorship of the organization in 2016. Gianotti earned her doctorate from the University of Milan, Italy, in 1987 and began working at CERN the same year. She will be the first female director of the international institution. Gianotti will replace Rolf Heuer, who oversaw the beginning of operations at the LHC. Because of her key role in the Atlas collaboration, Gianotti was one of the two researchers who announced the 2012 detection of the Higgs particle.
