Forging a global community for science and innovation

This week, CERN is launching the CERN Global Network, which responds to a real need for us to keep in touch, to share our knowledge and expertise, and to build on the fantastic resource of the CERN community broadly defined.

Here at CERN, we pride ourselves on the cross fertilization of ideas that occurs when people from around the world come together for a common goal. The Network extends that to our alumni and to our partners in academia, commerce and industry, allowing expertise to be shared among all its members. The CERN Global Network is open to anyone who works or has worked at or with CERN at any time. You don’t get much more inclusive than that.

In an increasingly competitive world, knowledge transfer is vitally important for an organization like CERN. The primary outcome of our basic science is knowledge, but what use is knowledge if it’s confined to a select few? The people who drew up the CERN Convention over half a century ago saw the importance of transferring knowledge when they wrote that CERN should do its utmost to make the results of its research as widely known as possible. That spirit has always driven CERN’s open and transparent approach to communication, and the Network is the next logical step. It will help us to disseminate knowledge as far as possible, and to share expertise within a wide constituency.

Furthermore, the nature of our knowledge and expertise is not confined to scientific and technical domains, but also encompasses experience with how people of very differing cultures and backgrounds can work harmoniously together.

As of this week, the Network is open to all current and former members of the CERN personnel, who are invited to join and create their profiles on the Network’s website. As of the summer, once the website is populated, the Network will go live to a wider community encompassing research institutes the world over and companies in CERN’s Member States. In short, it’s time to get better connected at http://globalnetwork.cern.ch.

 

by CERN Bulletin