Carlo Rubbia, Nobel Prize in Physics 1984, recently began working as consultant to the office of ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, bringing in new ideas and technological proposals for sustainable energy development and the mitigation of climate change.

The internationally-renown Italian scientist is working in coordination with the Commission’s Division of Natural Resources and Infrastructure.

Professor Rubbia will travel with ECLAC officials in order to have a regional perspective on the Commission’s future activities on these issues. In June, he went on his first two missions this year, to Chile and Brazil. His work will be delivered to member governments during ECLAC’s XXXIII Session in 2010.

Carlo Rubbia was researcher at Columbia University, where he conducted studies on the particle accelerator. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was professor of physics at Harvard University, and later served as Director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. Rubbia has been a member of Italy’s Pontifical Academy of Science since 1985.

In 1984, Rubbio and Simon van der Meer were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work leading to the discovery of new heavy field particles W and Z, produced by the collision of protons and antiprotons.

Rubbia is also consultant on climate change to the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and scientific consultant to the Secretary of State for Research, Carlos Martínez Alonso, and the General Director of CIEMAT, Juan Antonio Rubio, both of the government of Spain, on Concentrated Solar Power (CSP).

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