Xavier Barcons is Director General of the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) since September 2017. ESO is a world-leading Intergovernmental Organisation building and operating most powerful ground-based observatories (such as VLT, VLT, ALMA and ELT) and fostering cooperation in astronomy.

MA Univ. Barcelona (1981) and PhD Univ. Cantabria (1985), he is CSIC Research Professor since 2002. He was founding director (1995-1999) of the Instituto de Física de Cantabria, where he established the first Spanish X-ray astronomy group. He had several research periods at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge (UK). His research activity in astronomy focussed on Active Galaxies and X-ray surveys. Has published 135 research papers and supervised 7 PhD students. Was involved in ESA’s X-ray observatory flagship missions XMM-Newton and Athena. He was advisor Spanish Government on Astronomy and Research Infrastructures (2004-14), served at ESA Science advisory bodies and was ESO Council delegate (2007-11), Vicepresident (2011) and President (2012-14).

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