Javier Botero Alvarez is a Lead Education Specialist at the World Bank. He holds a PhD in Physics from Louisiana State University in 1986. Before joining the World Bank, he served in several leadership positions in education in Colombia. He started the Research and Special Studies Center at the Escuela Colombiana de Ingeniería, where he served as provost and president.  He was Viceminister of Education in 2002. He was also the country’s first Viceminister for Higher Education, position in which he served between 2002 and 2007, and between 2010 and 2012. Prior to his public policy service, he held several academic and research positions including at the University of Freiburg in Germany, Escuela Colombiana de Ingeniería in Bogotá, the University of Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the USA, the Atomic and Molecular Data  Unit at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, and the University of Ulm in Germany. His Physics research has been published in journals such as Physical Review Letters, Physical Review A, Journal of Physics B and Zeitschrift fur Physik D, as well as in several Proceedings.