Daniel Bonn succeeds Kareljan Schoutens, who became the new Dean of the UvA's Faculty of Science on the same date. Kareljan Schoutens was the first director of the Institute, which was born out of a merger of the WZI, the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITFA)  and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics  (NIKHEF) in 2011.

Jan de Boer has assumed Kareljan Schoutens’ role as head of the ITFA division of the Institute of Physics. Daniel Bonn, Jan de Boer and Stan Bentvelsen , head of NIKHEF, form the three-member Institute of Physics’ executive team.