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The SESAME initiative, the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East, is making progress. At a recent SESAME Council meeting at the end of May, Jordan, Iran and Israel confirmed their cash contributions to the project’s storage ring. The Palestinian Authority and Pakistan have confirmed their in-kind support and Egypt and Turkey are taking steps to allow their participation. Technically planned to start operation in 2015, SESAME has begun to show significant potential as a science for peace initiative in the Middle East.
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This week marks the mid-point of my mandate as Director General, so what better time to take stock of the last two and a half years and look forward to the next?
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Over the last three months the LHC has been gradually stepping up the total number of bunches in the beams and, early on Tuesday 28 June, the first fill with 1380 bunches per beam went into physics.
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Fellows from the Shuttleworth Foundation visited CERN from 20 to 23 June. The Foundation supports a variety of open source, volunteer-oriented projects tackling humanitarian and scientific problems. It is also the founding sponsor of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre, a partnership between CERN, the UN Institute for Training and Research and the University of Geneva, that enables ordinary citizens to participate in scientific research on the Web.
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Inspired by the open source software movement, the Open Hardware Repository was created to enable hardware developers to share the results of their R&D; activities. The recently published CERN Open Hardware Licence offers the legal framework to support this knowledge and technology exchange.
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Awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the muon neutrino, Jack Steinberger has been part of the CERN establishment for almost 50 years. He recently celebrated his 90th birthday and can still be found in his CERN office on an almost daily basis. If you happened to have a coffee with him… this is what he would tell you: his recollections, and thoughts about the present and future of particle physics.
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Doris Chromek-Burckhart took over as Head of the Users Office on 1 June. She succeeds Chris Onions, who held the post for more than ten years before retiring in 2010, and Jose Salicio Diez, who replaced him temporarily.
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At CERN, procuring all supplies and services is the job of the Procurement and Industrial Services (PI) group of the Finance and Procurement Department. Managing about 30,000 new orders and contracts every year, the Group recently launched a brand-new website where CERN and its external partners can find all the useful information to effectively do business together.
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Last week, CERN received a visit from a gifted group of high school students. The winners of CERN’s Special Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) were invited to spend a few days here and discover first hand what it's like to work in such a complex environment and how to best enjoy oneself in this part of the world.
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The Globe’s “Universe of Particles” exhibition has recently received four prestigious awards for its avant-garde design. This external praise is great encouragement for the CERN exhibitions currently on the drawing board.
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Switzerland’s first astronaut, Claude Nicollier, paid a short visit to CERN on Thursday 22 June, to lead a colloquium about the Hubble Space Telescope. With the Shuttle programme soon coming to an end. Nicollier recalled the enriching experience he had at NASA and gave us a preview of the futuristic project that he is currently involved in.
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Although electronic publishing has became mainstream, to a large extent the patterns of scholarly communication are still very similar to what we knew prior to the invention of the World Wide Web. Indeed, the most common method used by authors remains writing up the findings of research in an article to be published in a scholarly journal. Many communities want to make the next step, and CERN is acting as a hub in this change.
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Last week, over 700 science journalists from around the world made their way to Doha, Qatar, for the World Conference of Science Journalists. This meeting takes place every two years, and is the largest gathering of science writers in the world. Established in the early 1990s, this is the first time that a Middle Eastern country has hosted the conference, and it was quite an eye opener.
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After an inspiring lecture of the Summer student program, would you like to get hold of the books suggested by the speaker? The Library is there to help you.
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The holiday season is approaching and with it, the best chance of losing your password!!
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