BATAVIA – Fermilab director Pier Oddone is retiring after eight years spent leading the particle physics laboratory in Batavia, Fermilab announced Thursday in a news release.

Oddone will serve as the Fermilab director until July 1, 2013. A committee appointed by the chairman of the Fermi Research Alliance board of directors will conduct a search for Oddone's successor, the release states.

“During Pier’s eight years as director, Fermilab has made remarkable contributions to the world’s understanding of particle physics,” said Robert J. Zimmer, the FRA board chairman and president of the University of Chicago. “Pier’s leadership has ensured that Fermilab remains the centerpiece of particle physics research in the United States, and that the laboratory’s facilities and resources are focused on groundbreaking discoveries.”

Under Oddone’s direction, Fermilab’s Tevatron experiments zeroed in on the hiding place of the long-sought Higgs boson, discovered a suite of exotic particles and shed new light on the relationship between matter and antimatter, the release states. Fermilab completed significant contributions to the accelerator and CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, opened a remote operations center for the LHC on the Fermilab site, and played a leading role in the analysis of data leading to the July 4 discovery of a new particle likely to be the Higgs boson.

“The scientific discoveries that Pier has overseen, and the new projects now under construction on Fermilab site, are testament to Pier’s vision for advancing particle physics research in the United States,” said DOE Office of Science Director Bill Brinkman. “We commend Pier’s unwavering commitment to excellence in scientific research and laboratory operations.”