Kees van der Beek appointed Vice-Provost for Research, Deputy to the Provost of École Polytechnique

Kees van der Beek has been appointed Vice-Provost for Research at École Polytechnique, effective as of February 1, 2023. He will report to Dominique Rossin, Provost, and will succeed Benoît Deveaud. He is in charge of defining the strategy and supervising all activities of the Institution’s 23 research laboratories. He is a member of École Polytechnnique’s Executive Committee and Institut Polytechnique de Paris’ Teaching and Research Committee.

Native of the Netherlands and a physicist by profession, Kees van der Beek began his career as a researcher in the United States in 1996 at Argonne National Laboratory. Two years later and back in Europe, he started a second post-doctorate at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) within the Institut de Génie Atomique.

Kees van der Beek continued his career in France from January 1997 at École Polytechnique, as a researcher assigned to Irradiated Solids Laboratory (LSI). From 2002 to 2015, he carried out his research activity in conjunction with teaching at École Polytechnique. In 2009, thanks to his Habilitation to Supervise Research, he obtained the title of Director of Research. He directed LSI from January 2014 until May 2017.

In January 2019, he was assigned to the Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies in Palaiseau. He also joined the CNRS Institute of Physics. In January 2021, he was appointed Assistant to the Scientific Director (ADSR) at the CNRS for the Grenoble-Alpes site.

Simultaneously, Kees became Director of the "Physics of Light and Matter" (PhOM) Research Department of the ComUE Université Paris-Saclay from January 2016 to December 2020, then Director of the "Physics of Light and Matter" (PhOM) axis of the Graduate School of Physics of the same university in 2021. The same year, he also became Director of Institut Intégratif des Matériaux of Université Paris-Saclay.

Author of nearly 180 publications in international scientific journals, the new Vice-Provost for Research at École Polytechnique was chairman of the Condensed Matter Physics Division of French Physical Society from 2009 to 2013, chairman of the Condensed Matter Physics Division of the European Physical Society from 2015 to 2020, and he is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the European Physical Society. It has allowed him to establish numerous European contacts, notably through the Institute of Physics (UK), the Deutsche Physikalischen Gesellschaft (Germany), and the Real Sociedad Española de Física (Spain).

Kees van der Beek graduated from University of Leiden in 1988 and 1992 and holds a Diploma in Experimental Solid-State Physics and a PhD in Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

Kees van der Beek succeeds Benoît Deveaud in this position who was responsible for all of the School's laboratories and has coordinated all their actions since April 2017. Benoît Deveaud will continue to act as interim head of the Teaching and Research Committee at Institut Polytechnique de Paris.

«I welcome Kees and wish him full success in his new position. His in-depth knowledge of Higher Education and Research will be a precious asset to accompany École Polytechnique and Institut Polytechnique de Paris on their ambitious COP 2022-2026, in a dynamic of global research and innovation» says Eric Labaye, President of École Polytechnique and Institut Polytechnique de Paris.