David MacFarlane

SLAC Chief Research Officer

As SLAC’s Chief Research Officer, David B. MacFarlane is responsible for overall science strategy and planning. He has held senior leadership positions at the laboratory since 2009, a period that saw the transformation of SLAC from a mainly high-energy physics laboratory into a multi-program laboratory.

MacFarlane joined the SLAC faculty in 2005 as a professor of particle physics and astrophysics, and served as associate laboratory director for Particle Physics and Astrophysics from 2009 to 2015. Before coming to SLAC, he was on the faculties of the University of California, San Diego, and McGill University.

His research has focused on discovering and exploring the properties of b quarks, which are heavy unstable partners of the quarks in ordinary matter and key components of the physics of the early universe. This research initially centered on the ARGUS experiment at the DESY laboratory in Germany; later, he played leading roles in the BABAR experiment at SLAC, serving as spokesperson for the research collaboration from 2004 to 2006.

MacFarlane received a bachelor’s of science degree from the engineering science program at the University of Toronto in 1978, and a PhD in particle physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1984.

In addition to being an American Physical Society fellow, he is the recipient of a number of awards for research in particle physics, including the 1991 Herzberg Medal from the Canadian Association of Physicists; a 1994 E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; and the 1995 Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada.