Jim Kerby is the Project Director for the Advanced Photon Source Upgrade (APS-U) project at Argonne. Kerby oversees the planning, construction, and implementation of the upgrade. The APS is a DOE Office of Science user facility.

When completed, the upgraded APS will transform the existing world-class facility, exceeding today’s capabilities by two to three orders of magnitude in brightness, coherence and flux. The transformation of the accelerator and beamlines by the APS-U will enable new regimes of scientific discoveries.

Kerby joined Argonne in 2012 as the principal project manager of APS-U and later transitioned to Chief Project Officer of the APS-U. He has over 30 years of engineering and technical management experience. Prior to joining Argonne, Kerby worked at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, including leadership of the $200 million US-LHC Accelerator Project, which helped construct the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. He is currently a member of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) Technical Advisory Council at Michigan State University and the ALS Upgrade Project Management Advisory Committee at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  He typically serves on several national and international review committees each year.

Kerby holds bachelor’s (1984) and master’s (1986)  degrees in mechanical engineering from Purdue University as well as an MBA (2006) from Purdue’s Krannert School of Management. He is a member of Argonne’s Project Management Advisory Council, mentors early career staff and collaborates with other U.S. Department of Energy laboratories, universities and industry partners.