Visit by the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic
The Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, Iveta Radicova, visited CERN on 28 February, meeting with CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer and going down to the ALICE cavern.
Upon arrival, Prime Minister Radicova spent about half an hour discussing the Slovak Republic’s involvement in CERN with the DG, and was very interested in the physics results that the Organization is currently working on. After signing the official guest book in Building 500, the Prime Minister crossed the border into France to visit the ALICE experiment. Donning a helmet, she descended into the ALICE cavern to take a first-hand look at one of the two CERN experiments to which her country has contributed (ATLAS being the second).
“We also showed her the read-out chambers for the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and the electronics for the pixel detector that are on display in the ALICE exhibition area, as they were produced in the Slovak Republic,” says Karel Safarik, the Slovakian ALICE physicist who accompanied the visit.
Prime Minister Radicova ended her visit with a tour of CERN’s superconducting magnet test facility SM18, guided by representatives from the TE and BE Departments.
The Slovak Republic has been a Member State of CERN since 1993 - you can read more about the country’s contribution to CERN here.
