Mark Thomson works for CERN and is the next Director General Designate, a role which he will take up in January 2026. Having worked for CERN in the 1990s, he returned to the UK in 2000 to take up a lectureship at the University of Cambridge in 2000, where he is still a Professor of Experimental Particle Physics. He has over 1100 publications covering a range of areas in High Energy Particle Physics. His main research interests have been electroweak physics at electron-positron colliders, neutrino physics, and the development of novel reconstruction techniques for cutting edge detector technologies. In 2015, he was elected as co-spokesperson of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). From 2018 – 2024 he was the Executive Chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, one of the nine councils of UK Research and Innovation. In this capacity he led the work on the establishment and implementation of the UK infrastructure roadmap, which now has a portfolio of projects with a commitment of £2.5 billion. In addition to his other activities, he is the author of “Modern Particle Physics”, which was published in 2013.