On Tuesday, 28 May, as part of CERN's diversity programme the British sociologist Tom Shakespeare gave a talk entitled  “From Newton to Hawking and beyond: why disability equality is relevant to the world of particle physics”. Among his other activities, from 2008 to 2013 Shakespeare worked for the Disability and Rehabilitation programme of the World Health Organisation. He currently teaches medical sociology at the University of East Anglia Medical School.

In his talk he underlined the extreme diversity of types of handicap in the world, pointing out that 15% of the world's population lives with some form of handicap and that disability is something that concerns us all. Shakespeare lamented the discrimination to which the handicapped are too often exposed and stressed that “People are handicapped by society not by their bodies”. Citing famous examples from physics, Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, he demonstrated that disability is in no way a handicap to a brilliant career and that it is incumbent upon society to find ways of ensuring that the handicapped are integrated into professional life.

“It is an important part of the CERN diversity programme to ensure that disability is seen as a form of diversity and that our colleagues with disabilities feel included and able to contribute fully to our common goals,” says diversity programme leader Sudeshna Datta-Cockerill.

Shakespeare’s talk was filmed and will be available on the Diversity web page from next week.  Stay tuned.

The residents of CERN’s local area took to their bikes on Sunday, 3 June for the inauguration of the Passport to the Big Bang trail, a scientific tourist route through the Pays de Gex and the Canton of Geneva.

This trail links 10 exhibition platforms located in front of 10 CERN sites, tracing the shape of the huge underground LHC particle-accelerator ring. The platforms offer mini-exhibitions explaining the fundamental research conducted at CERN and its impact and they feature telescopes, similar to those found at tourist spots, in which short video sequences illustrating different aspects of science and technology at CERN can be seen by looking through the lenses. Visitors can also take part in an online game called “Mission LHC” using the interactive terminals located on each platform.

On Sunday morning, some 250 cyclists took part in the timed mountain bike rally and in the family bike ride around the roads of the Pays de Gex, directed by voluntary stewards from CERN and the local communes who took their roles of ensuring safety at the two events very seriously.

At midday, the trail was officially inaugurated by representatives of the local communities and the Director-General, who handed out the first Passports to young people from the region. In the afternoon, the ten CERN sites where the trail’s exhibition platforms are located each hosted activities, with the co-operation of local associations and clubs.

(Image: Christoph Balle/CERN)

Visitors took to the roads and paths, going from one site to the next, meeting scientists on the platforms, building detectors out of Kapla blocks or Lego or taking part in a local club’s sports activity. All in all, the event brought the wonderful atmosphere of the Fête des Voisins to CERN.

This year, the Advisory Committee of CERN Users (ACCU) celebrates its 25th anniversary. Created in its modern form in December 1988 - at a time when the number of users was about 1500 - the committee still defends the interests of today’s users, now numbering around 11,000.

Actually, the first ACCU was established in 1977. Demanded by the rising number of Users, the need for such a committee arose during the 127th Meeting of Committee of Council (as stated in this official document): “In view of the large number and diversity of CERN Users, it has become apparent for some time that it would be useful to have an organised channel of consultation between the CERN direction and a representative group of CERN Users.”

Michael Hauschild, ACCU Secretary since 2010, says: “At that time, there were fewer ACCU members, and not all the countries were represented. With the birth of the modern form of the committee, in 1988, the decision to have representatives from all CERN countries was made. So, today, 23 countries plus CERN and the non-member states are represented in the ACCU, which totals 33 delegates.”

Four times a year, the ACCU meets to discuss topics the delegates have put on the agenda, topics based on their own experience or those suggested by users. “CERN Users have different needs to staff,” says Hauschild. “This year, for example, the health insurance question is one of our ‘burning topics’. Indeed, Users and their family are not automatically covered by the CERN health insurance scheme CHIS. If they are insufficiently insured while at CERN, they have to find a solution by themselves, which can be complicated and expensive.” To solve this problem, CERN did a market survey to find competitive insurance for CERN Users.

At each ACCU meeting, several regular reports are produced: news from the CERN Management, usually given by the Director-General; a report on services from the GS Department covering all the different services that CERN provides; Users' Office News, in which information is given on possible changes of registration procedures for users, visa matters, host state relations and similar issues; and finally, reports from ACCU representatives in other committees.

The OPERA experiment was designed to prove unambiguously muon to tau neutrino oscillations in appearance mode through the direct observation of tau neutrinos in a muon-neutrino beam produced at CERN.

OPERA uses a hybrid structure of electronic detectors and nuclear emulsions. Nuclear emulsions are used as sub-micrometric trackers capable of seeing both the production and decay vertices of the short lived (10^-13 s) tau leptons. The experiment has been taking data for five years, since 2008. The analysis of the data is in progress.

In this seminar, Giovanni De Lellis of the University "Federico II" and INFN in Naples, Italy, reports the latest oscillation results of the experiment.

Watch the webcast

At the end of September we expect a huge number of visitors for the Open Days. You, the volunteers, are the key without which the Laboratory’s doors could not really open. Sign up now!

Why volunteer?

To be a volunteer during the Open Days is to serve the Organisation for half a day (or more) and reply positively to the Director-General's request. Come and strengthen our teams, help make the Open Days a success and seize this opportunity to

• take part in a unique and friendly event which only occurs every four to five years
• be an ambassador for CERN - be proud to talk about your areas of work and welcome the visitors to our sites
• meet new colleagues

Who can volunteer?

All CERN people, no matter the contract, aged 18 and over. Retirees, family members of CERN people and ex-CERN people are also welcome. If you don’t/no longer have a CERN computing account, please create a lightweight account.

What reward?

The volunteers will receive training tailored to their role and, as with all Open Days, as well as having the satisfaction of being able to say “I was there!” they will be given exclusive OpenDays 2013-branded clothing. Volunteers will also be provided with packed lunches and drinks. Last but not least, through the visits service places will be exclusively reserved for volunteers of the Open Days in LHC visits.

The online sign-up is now ready and we hope that a large number of people will volunteer straight away. This will give us time to organize the troops and assign roles according to preferences and needs (descriptions of the roles can be found on the website). So what are you waiting for? Click here!

This month, CERN's Beams department and Knowledge transfer group hosted a BE-KT Innovation Day to identify ideas from the department with significant technology-transfer potential.

The morning was dedicated to the presentation and discussion of some ten innovative concepts proposed by experts from the Beams department, with a good balance between hardware and software technologies. Some ideas have been conceived in the context of longstanding projects; others are new developments or solutions that have recently generated the interest of external partners in industry or academia.

In the afternoon successful examples of ongoing projects and promising technologies in advanced phases of the technology transfer process were discussed.

The Innovation day was also an opportunity to provide updates on projects supported in previous years by the KT Fund – financial support made available by the Knowledge transfer group re-investing part of the revenues generated by the commercial exploitation of CERN’s technology portfolio.  

The department also presented a list of products licensed under CERN’s Open Hardware Licence, CERN OHL. The model has been successfully applied to seven electronic card designs commercialized by four companies after an initial triggering procurement action from CERN.

“The BE-KT Innovation day helped us not only to identify innovative technologies, but also to discuss what is the best way to disseminate them”, says Enrico Chesta, head of the Technology transfer and Intellectual property management section of the Knowledge transfer group. “Our impact-driven approach includes both open dissemination and protected dissemination strategies”, he says. “We choose which way to go by evaluating case by case what is the best way to maximize the positive impact on society and on the competitiveness of our industrial partners.”

The technologies presented, developed to generate, accelerate, diagnose and optimize beams in CERN’s accelerator complex, have potential for a variety of applications ranging from medical field (high gradient structures, power supplies and beam instrumentation for hadrontherapy, 4D tomography) to metrology (improvement of primary frequency standards, or measurement of ferrite material properties), aerospace (reduction of multipactoring risk on satellite equipment), energy consumption (high power RF loads for energy recovery), machine protection (high performance arc detection devices, or sensitive temperature mapping systems) and data acquisition (very flexible and fast control system codes or high precision computation methodologies ).

“We are always interested in learning about new opportunities," says Giovanni Anelli, head of the Knowledge transfer group. “The innovation day is a promising formula that could be extended to other departments to have a comprehensive overview of CERN’s technology transfer potentials and to match the needs of CERN’s inventors with the services provided by the Knowledge transfer group.”

Read more:

"BE-KT innovation day" – Paul Collier, Beams department head

Agenda and presentation slides

CERN, the European Association of National Research Facilities (ERF), and the European Spallation Source (ESS), announce the second joint workshop on Energy for Sustainable Science at Research Infrastructures. The event will take place at CERN on 23-25 October 2013.

The first edition of the workshop was held in 2011 in Lund, Sweden, where the European Spallation Source is under construction. This event - the first fully dedicated to energy management in research centres - attracted more than 150 people interested in sharing energy-management policies in large-scale laboratories and organizations, in particular those policies relating to the design and operation of accelerators.

“Thanks to the experience gained two years ago, the programme of this edition has been enriched to cover more topics and to identify best practices,” says Frédérick Bordry, head of CERN’s Technology department. “In addition to the organizing research facilities, other worldwide leading laboratories, like KEK, Fermilab and Brookhaven National Laboratory will present their strategies for energy management, efficiency and sustainability.”

Around 300 experts are expected to come to CERN to exchange knowledge in the fields of energy efficiency in computing centres, procurement and financing of energy and development and management of sustainable campus. A session of the workshop will be dedicated to green technologies developed in large-scale research infrastructures.

Registration for the workshop is now open.

Read more:"Why energy talks at CERN?"– Frédérick Bordry

This week’s meetings of Council brought some very good news for CERN: the budget for 2014 and the Medium Term Plan (MTP) were both approved, and contributions received from member states make the level of contributions received by mid-year 2013 consistent with previous years.

All of these things underline the strong commitment our member states have for CERN, and the level of support that our field enjoys around the world. Approval of the 2014 budget means level funding with indexation. In the current financial climate, this is a very good result for CERN, and an endorsement of the European model for long-term funding of science. The governance model of Europe’s eight Intergovernmental Research Organizations (EIROs) has stood the test of time, providing support for science stretching beyond the political cycle, and weathering economic highs and lows for close to 60 years.

Approval of the MTP equates to an endorsement of CERN’s strategy right into the LHC’s second long shutdown, LS2. It is the first step in implementing the new European Strategy for Particle Physics, allowing us to guarantee optimal exploitation of the LHC as far as the end of 2018, the first year of LS2.

In other news from Council, reports from fact-finding missions to Brazil, Israel and Russia have all been positive, taking all of these countries a step further along the path to CERN membership. Israel is an associate member in the pre-stage to membership, while Brazil and Russia are both applicants for associate membership. At the end of this year, we will be thanking Philippe Bloch for his service as the head of the Physics department, and welcoming Livio Mapelli into the role. Livio’s career began with a PhD at the University of Pavia, followed by stints at the Rutherford Laboratory and on UA2. In the 1990s, he led an important R&D project for LHC data acquisition systems, taking that expertise to the ATLAS collaboration when it was formed in 1996. He has been deputy head of the Physics Department since 2010.

Last but not least, this week also saw a change of leadership at Fermilab. After eight years at the helm, Pier Oddone is handing over to Nigel Lockyer. One very sure pair of hands is passing the baton to another, and I look forward to continuing the strong relationship between CERN and Fermilab that we have enjoyed since long before the beginning of my mandate. 

Lecture at 7pm 4 July in the CERN Globe of Science and Innovation. This event will be webcast.

The 65-year-old American artist Bill Fontana starts his residency at CERN on 4 July. To mark this event, he is giving a lecture, with his specially chosen science inspiration partner, the cosmologist Subodh Patil. Their individual presentations will be followed by a discussion about the importance of sound in the universe and here on earth in science and art.

Bill Fontana is internationally known for his pioneering experiments in “sound art” that have featured in some of the world’s leading arts institutions all over the world, including Tate Modern, The Whitney Museum of American Art. He studied with the composer John Cage who transformed his understanding of the world as a universe of sound.

Bill Fontana has turned some of the world's most iconic structures into sound art - such as the Golden Gate in San Francisco, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and Big Ben in London. So what might he do with the LHC - the Large Hadron Collider or CERN itself? And why has he chosen a cosmologist to guide him on this adventure in the scientific field during his Collide @ CERN artist in residence which begins this July?

There are still some seats left for this event and RSVP is essential. So to reserve a place for you and whomever you wish to invite, please email  Collide.events@cern.ch  so we can  reserve seat(s) for you  at what promises to be an extraordinary evening about arts and science. Thank you.

Any questions please phone Julian Calo, Assistant to Arts @ CERN +41 22 7662109.

The communications group is building an app for CERN people, and they need your help. Over the coming months the project team are going to be calling on CERN people to help with initial user research and insight gathering.

"We need to get the basics right: we need to have a really clear idea of who we are building this app for and what they need," says Dan Noyes, who is leading the project.

The project team will be conducting user research in a variety of ways, trying to reach lots of different types of CERN people. They will conduct observational research as well as structured interviews, and ask volunteers to keep diaries relating to their daily lives at CERN.

Sign up now to express an interest in helping out.

Apps at CERN

Are you developing a CERN mobile app of any kind? If so we'd really like to hear about it - tell us via this form (sign in required).

Inaugurated at the beginning of June, the Passport to the Big Bang is a 54-kilometre scientific tourist trail comprising 10 exhibition platforms in front of 10 CERN sites in the Pays de Gex and the Canton of Geneva. It is now open free of charge to the general public and especially to pupils from local schools.

On 25 June, for the first time, a class completed part of the circuit on bikes: Some 20 4^th grade pupils from the collège de Ferney-Voltaire pedalled off to learn about the activities at three of CERN’s sites. Their first pit stop was the CMS platform, where they had the opportunity to visit the experiment, and then they cycled on to the Environment and Cryogenics platforms, taking part in Passport to the Big Bang activities at each stage, watching the short films on the research carried out at the laboratory and finding the answers to the Passport to the Big Bang riddles.

“The point of this visit was to get schoolchildren to put the discovery formula of the Passport to the Big Bang circuit through its paces. Our objective is to use the Passport to the Big Bang as a means of explaining the research CERN does to pupils in local schools,” says Sandrine Saison-Marsollier who is responsible for organizing activities for local schools. “We are currently preparing a brochure for teachers to encourage them to complete the circuit with their pupils.” 

The visit also served to highlight various areas for improvement. For instance the teachers suggested ways in which the questionnaires to be completed by the pupils could be supplemented. But in any case both teachers and pupils indicated that they had enjoyed the circuit and found it very instructive. Martine Laffay, the physics teacher accompanying the pupils, says: “We hope that this will be the first of many visits!”  And there is a bonus: the circuit combines physics and physical activity, which is why physical education teachers also joined the group and were just as enthusiastic about the circuit.

In his keynote address this week at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations (UN), CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer pushed scientific research as a driving force for knowledge, technology and innovation.

"In today’s challenging period," said Heuer, "all regions need to step up support for research and innovation to ensure - in a global competitive environment - the sustainable development of science and technology necessary for the upturn and growth of everybody’s economy."

The Director-General was speaking at the ECOSOC annual ministerial review on the theme of “Science, technology and innovation, and the potential of culture, for promoting sustainable development and achieving the United Nations 'Millennium Development Goals'”.

Heuer said that though sharing information and knowledge is the basis for excellence, cooperation and competition do not exclude each other. Coining a new word as a challenge to UN translators, he said that "co-opetition" is the key to successful scientific endeavour.

Watch the full speech here

As you may know Open Days will take place at the end of September and a lot of volunteers are needed. Don’t wait more and sign up now!

Why volunteer?

To be a volunteer during the Open Days is to serve the Organization for half a day (or more) and reply positively to the Director-General's request. Come and strengthen our teams, help make the Open Days a success and seize this opportunity to

• take part in a unique and friendly event which only occurs every 4 to 5 years
• be an ambassador for CERN - be proud to talk about your areas of work and welcome the visitors to our sites
• meet new colleagues

Who can volunteer?

All CERN people, no matter the contract, aged 18 and over. Retirees, family members of CERN people and ex-CERN people are also welcome. If you don’t/no longer have a CERN computing account, please create a lightweight account.

What reward?

The volunteers will receive training tailored to their role, the satisfaction of being able to say “I was there!” exclusive Open Days 2013-branded clothing and packed lunches and drinks. Last but not least, through the visits service, once per week from October to December places will be exclusively reserved for all volunteers of the Open Days in LHC visits.

When and how to register?

The online sign-up is still open. Sign up now!

A volunteers leads a tour group at the Open Days in 2008.

Lunchtime today saw a packed CERN auditorium clapping and stamping along to the sound of reels, jigs and airs played by the talented Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra from the region near Glasgow in Scotland.

For half an hour, the orchestra, composed of over 100 players aged 10-18 and conducted by musical director David Moore, brought the CERN auditorium to life with violins, cellos, guitars and percussion. Their visit is part of a European tour to celebrate the orchestra's 30^th anniversary.

"We were in Geneva and thought that CERN would be a very exciting place to come and share our music," says Moore. "I learnt so many things on the CERN visit this morning – which I hope not to forget!"

A highlight of the concert was the world premiere of The Higgs boson, a fiery tune composed by fiddle player Joe Cherry, 17. A slow melody played on bagpipes outside the auditorium exploded into a lively rhythmic piece complete with furious fiddles and an epic drum solo. Needless to say, The Higgs boson got a standing ovation from the CERN crowd.

The Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra continues their European tour tomorrow, playing concerts in Paris and Brussels.

Missed the lunchtime concert? The Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra are playing at the Scots Kirk in Geneva today at 7pm CET. Admission free. 

In keeping with tradition, the organizers of the Tour de France set up another race, the Étape du Tour, which is open to the general public and follows the actual route of an official stage of the Tour proper. This year, the chosen venue was Annecy and its neighbouring mountain, Le Semnoz, which played host to 11,000 cycling enthusiasts from all parts. This penultimate stage of the 2013 Tour will be raced by the professionals on 20 July.

The public race was won by Nicolas Roux, an experienced cyclist and member of CERN’s GS-IS Group, who devoured the 128-km course in just 4 hours and 15 minutes, nine seconds ahead of cycling champion Julien Absalon. “I just managed to overhaul Julien Absalon 500 metres before the finishing line,” says Roux. “It was a fantastic race!”

Come rain or shine, this consummate sportsman will always take his bike to cover the 30-km journey to and from CERN and he regularly takes part in competitions at weekends. “I’ve done the Étape du Tour several times,” he says. “I won the Pau-Bagnères-de-Luchon stage in 2012, and then the Paris-Roubaix.” So, what's next? LeTour itself?

For more information on this event, see the article in the Dauphiné Libéré on 7 July.

This week CERN will be hosting a seminar entitled The music of physics and the physics of music at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

The festival is celebrating its 47^th anniversary this year and has become an established feature on the international music scene.  Perhaps less well known is the programme of free seminars and workshops that run in parallel with concerts by some of the biggest names in music. On the bill alongside Prince – this year’s headline act – are researchers from the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, as well as CERN artist-in-residence Bill Fontana who will present "sound sculptures" to festivalgoers tomorrow.

On Thursday, accompanying his talk with music played on his CMS guitar, Piotr Traczyk of the CMS collaboration will speak about the Higgs boson: what the particle is, how it appears in proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and how it fits into the bigger picture of particle physics.

Lily Asquith of the ATLAS collaboration will introduce festivalgoers to the concept of sonification– the translation of real LHC collision data into sound.

Working with composer Carla Scaletti at the University of Illinois in the US and theorist Michael Kramer of Aachen University in Germany, Asquith has recently been given permission by ATLAS spokesperson Dave Charlton to sonify real data collected by the ATLAS detector. "We’ve been producing sounds such as the two gammas from a Higgs decay – one flying past each ear!" she says. "At Montreux, I will explain why this is an interesting project for ATLAS data."

The third presenter is Mark Lewney. After completing his PhD in guitar acoustics and winning the first FameLab science communication competition, Lewney now tours schools with his lecture Rock Guitar in 11 Dimensions, which explains the physics of rock via riffs from Vivaldi to AC/DC.

The seminars will take place in Petit Palais at the Montreux festival at 1pm on 17 and 18 July.

Physics has never sounded so good!

It's 9.15am on Friday 5 July and a fire is building nicely in the CERN firefighters’ simulation chamber at the Prevessin training site. Five firefighters wearing prototype under-garments and heat and flame-resistant coveralls prepare to enter the inferno. One by one they take their seats in the blaze where they must remain for 15 minutes. Under their clothes they are wired up to an array of sensors that measure their heart rates, humidity levels and body temperatures.

Members of the CERN Fire and Rescue Service and the Swiss fire services are taking part in a series of experiments organized by the Federation of Swiss Fire Services (FSSP) to test out new materials for fire-resistant clothing.

Inside the chamber, temperatures begin to soar: 180°C at mid-height and up to 480 °C at ceiling level. Under the close scrutiny of their instructors, the five guinea pigs sit and wait. Once the 15 minutes are up, they are taken to an air-conditioned room at 22°C for 15 minutes of respite. But they aren’t allowed a drop of water, as this would skew the results. They then head back into the chamber to “cook” for another 15 minutes.

A few minutes’ respite before going in for a second roasting (Image: Anna Pantelia/CERN)

At the end of the exercise, everything is weighed - socks, pants, stockings, glove liners, trousers etc. – to determine precisely how much water has been absorbed by each of the new equipment items. At these temperatures, the body loses several litres of water in a few minutes.

“This new equipment has been designed to allow the body to breathe without losing too much water,“ says CERN firefighter Heiko Clicque took part in the tests. "Firefighters in Switzerland and elsewhere are encountering safety problems with their coveralls, which are too hermetic and thus accumulate too much heat. This generates a sharp rise in body temperature which can cause loss of consciousness, with disastrous consequences.”

Ten firefighters took part in this series of tests in vivo that follow on from a first campaign at the Swiss Federal materials testing laboratory (EMPA) in Saint Gallen last spring. The same subjects underwent various exercises where they had to run inside a chamber heated up to 40°C with 0% humidity. The results of these experiments, which are the fruit of a broad interdisciplinary collaboration, are expected in September and will contribute to the development of new, improved equipment. This will be good news for firefighters and fire victims alike.

This week at the 23rd International Conference on Magnet Technology (MT-23) in Boston, US, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) honoured former CERN Director-General Robert Aymar and ATLAS Magnet System project leader Herman ten Kate for their contributions to the field of applied superconductivity.

The IEEE Council on Superconductivity established career achievement awards 14 years ago to recognize researchers, engineers and managers, who during their professional careers have made outstanding contributions to the field. So far, 17 people have received the award.

Ten Kate was recognized for his pioneering work in the construction of the first full-size accelerator dipole magnet employing Nb₃Sn wire, operating above 11 tesla; his managerial leadership in the ATLAS superconducting magnet system; and for training young engineers and scientists in superconductor technology.

Aymar receives his award for sustained service to the applied superconductivity community for promotion and leadership in the development of large-scale superconducting magnet systems and for promoting academic research related to applied superconductivity. 

The MT-23 conference continues until 19 July.

The Italian Physical Society has honoured five Italian physicists at CERN with the Enrico Fermi Prize for their work on Large Hadron Collider experiments.

Award recipients:

• Pierluigi Campana, LHCb spokesperson, for “the first observation, with the LHCb experiment, of CP violation in B-sub-s meson decays, and for a large number of high-precision measurements in ‘heavy flavour’ physics.”
• Simone Giania, TOTEM spokesperson, for “the first direct confirmation, with the TOTEM experiment…that the total proton-proton cross-section increases with energy, and for further in-depth studies on the proton structure.”
• Fabiola Gianotti, former ATLAS spokesperson, for “the discovery, with the ATLAS experiment, of a new fundamental particle with mass around 125 GeV and properties consistent with a Higgs boson, theoretically predicted almost 50 years ago, the existence of which ensures a huge insight in the understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics.”
• Paolo Giubellino, ALICE spokesperson, for “the unveiling, with the ALICE experiment, of the new features of the hottest and densest state of matter ever produced in very high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions, in particular those of the short lived, rapidly evolving and strongly interacting deconfined medium generated in such extreme conditions.”
• Guido Tonelli, former CMS spokesperson, for “the discovery, with the CMS experiment, of a new fundamental particle with mass around 125 GeV and properties consistent with a Higgs boson, theoretically predicted almost 50 years ago, the existence of which ensures a huge insight in the understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics.”

This award was established 12 years ago, in honour of Enrico Fermi’s 100th birthday, to recognize particularly outstanding work done by members of the Italian Physical Society. 

Are you an electromechanical technician or engineer, an IT specialist, an energy expert, keen on helping to set up a museum, or just willing to give up some of your time? Join Divonnelectro, an association founded by Georges Leskens, a former electrical engineer at CERN. The association's current project is to restore the oldes hydroelectric plant in France. 

The members of the association meet every Tuesday morning, or more frequently if events are planned or for social occasions. Divonnelectro participates in the scientific development of renewable and sustainable energy through the organisation of technical conferences and exhibitions at the plant.

Read more: "Wanted: elbow grease" - CERN Bulletin