P article physics
“We have a lot of scientists and brains; it’s a great place to meet with people”
Frederick Bordry, CERN
Discovering the unknown CERN is where physicists and engineers investigate the fundamental structure of the universe. Frederick Bordry, director of accelerators and technology, helps to explain.
O ne of Europe's first joint ventures, the world-famous European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN, is a byword in innovation, underlined by The Global Innovation Index 2016 report, a leading reference on innovation, which cites CERN as an example of a highly
successful international initiative.
CERN's main area of research is particle physics.
The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 and the Nobel prize in
2013 catapulted CERN to international prominence. Today more people than ever
want to visit; of the 100,000 per year able to do so, another 200,000 are disappointed. Frederick Bordry, director of accelerators and technology CERN, explains: “We are a centre of innovation, we put a lot of people together. On site we have 2,400 staff, 1,600 PhD holders, serving a community of 13,000 users. At any given moment there are 7 or 8,000 people on the CERN site. For anyone wishing to work in an international way, this is a great place to visit.” For anyone hosting a meeting in Geneva, a visit to CERN offers a huge plus; Bordry points out that around 10-15 large congresses per year request a visit. CERN’s location is a key part of its success, according to Bordry: “It is very important for us to be here as Geneva is so international. We have a lot of contact with the WMO, WIPO and many other international organisations in Geneva. For me, Geneva is the heart of Europe. It’s easy to access, it’s a really nice city and it has all the international organisations, the research institutes, universities and HUG. We have a lot of scientists and brains; it’s a great place to meet with people.”
CERN / Europe’s first scientific international organisation, founded in 1954, CERN is both a first-class centre for fundamental research and a pioneering adventure in international collaboration with 22 member states / With more than 13,000 scientists from around 100 countries, CERN is a laboratory for the world / Engineering for CERN, especially in cryogenics, superconductivity, vacuum, microelectronics and civil engineering, gives companies experience and technologies that they can apply elsewhere / The World Wide Web was invented at CERN to help particle physicists around the world to communicate. Now CERN is the central hub of a ‘computing grid’ that harnesses vast amounts of computer power through networks across the world
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