On 11 September, CERN received a visit from Ana Brnabić, Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia, and Mladen Šarčević, Serbia’s Minister of Education, Science and Technological Development. The Serbian delegation was welcomed in the Main Building by CERN’s Director-General, Fabiola Gianotti, the Director for International Relations, Charlotte Warakaulle, the Director for Accelerators and Technology, Frédérick Bordry, the Director for Finance and Human Resources, Martin Steinacher, the Head of Relations with Associate and non-Member States, Emmanuel Tsesmelis, and the principal adviser for relations with Serbia, Christoph Schäfer.

Following a tour and lunch with members of CERN’s Serbian community, a collaboration agreement was signed between CERN and Serbia. The delegation was then taken to Point 5 of the LHC to visit the CMS experiment, then to the magnet assembly hall, the S’Cool LAB facility, and the Universe of Particles exhibition.

Serbia is an Associate Member State in the pre-stage to CERN membership and has about thirty users who participate in several experiments including the two major LHC experiments, ATLAS and CMS. 

The LHC is entering the final days of the four-year-long Run 2. At the end of October, the last protons for Run 2 will circulate inside the LHC. The next protons will be injected only in the spring of 2021! 

In the meantime, the LHC had a productive August and early September, bringing the integrated luminosity delivered to ATLAS and CMS to just above 53 fb^-1. This is a new yearly record for the LHC, surpassing the 2017 value of 50 fb^-1. The machine operated not very far from the maximum luminosity that can be sustained by the cryogenic system that cools the quadrupoles installed around the experiments. With the remaining days of operation, over 60 fb^–1 are within reach if the machine availability remains high. The Run 2 total is now at 147 fb^-1 and another week of production after the upcoming technical stop should bring us to the Run 2 target of 150 fb^-1 delivered to both ATLAS and CMS.

In parallel, the machine delivered 2 fb^-1 to LHCb, which operates at a peak luminosity that is roughly five times lower than ATLAS or CMS. LHCb operates with levelled luminosity, meaning that the beams are separated deliberately to maintain a constant collision rate. For this reason, it is not the peak performance of the LHC that counts for LHCb but the amount of time spent with colliding beams. Within the remaining operation period with protons the final LHCb value will approach 2.5 fb^-1. ALICE, which operates in a similar mode than LHCb but at significantly lower luminosity, integrated 20 fb^-1 so far.

The last month of Run 2 before long shutdown 2 (LS2) will be devoted to a lead-ion run. A few machine shifts were already devoted to setting up the ion optics. Since the ion run is very short, part of the setting up is traditionally performed during the preceding proton run. 

With its leading position within fundamental research and high-energy physics, CERN employs some of the best engineers and scientists in the world. Although CERN’s focus being on fundamental science, the high-end research and state-of-the-art engineering created by CERN personnel has the potential to benefit many fields in society, which the proud history of innovation at CERN has shown many times before. Now CERN would like to welcome all members of personnel to take part of this great tradition and take your projects from CERN to society.

The CERN Knowledge Transfer Fund is funding projects based on CERN technology made by the CERN community that have the potential to have a positive impact on society. Started in 2011, 41 projects have already been funded with each project receiving 15-220kCHF, with the projects usually running 1-4 years. The projects chosen for funding are selected by the KT Fund Selection Committee, composed of CERN’s department heads, as well as members of the CERN Knowledge Transfer group. Over the years since the start of the fund, the projects funded have spanned many technological fields and applications, from aerospace and superconductivity to cultural heritage. Recent projects funded by the CERN Knowledge Transfer Fund include a collaboration between CERN and the Italian Space Agency working on a compact magnet based on high temperature superconductivity to apply in space applications. Furthermore, a project selected for funding in 2017 have applied Radio-Frequency Quadropoles to be used in art studies. Doing so, CERN technology now helps to evaluate, study and preserve classical works of art for future generations to enjoy.

If your technology has the potential for applications in medical or biomedical technologies, you should first apply for funding from the CERN Medical Applications Budget. Focusing solely on projects with potential medical applications, 25 projects have been funded since 2014, supporting the equivalent of 21 researchers. 

All CERN personnel are welcome to submit their applications before 12 November 2018. Read more about how to apply for funding here:

• CERN KT Fund: https://kt.cern/funding/kt-fund/selection-process
• CERN Medical Applications Budget: https://kt.cern/funding/medtech/ma-budget

​In June, the mobility working group launched a survey to understand CERN people’s habits and needs concerning mobility. Here are the results.

• Who are you?

4,300 members of the personnel, of whom 48% were staff members and fellows, completed the questionnaire. Thank you! Almost 70% of those who took part live in France, which corresponds to the proportion of members of the personnel registered as resident in France. Most of you work on the Meyrin site (80%). Entrance B is used by 39% of you, and Entrance E by 33%. 

• How do you commute to CERN?

On average, you travel 14 kilometres to get to CERN, but the commute is less than 10 kilometres for 66% of you.

Those who cycle to CERN make up 13% of the respondents and 4% arrive on foot. This is encouraging as it is a higher percentage than usually observed in cities. Slightly less than 60% of you are single car occupants.

Those who use their cars the most are staff members living in France. The reasons cited for single-occupancy car use were the need for flexibility or the lack of alternative modes of transport.

• Are you ready to use other means of transport?

Yes, and this is very encouraging. More than 10% of those who travel alone by car indicated that they were ready to use a more environmentally friendly mode of transport (bike, public transport or car sharing). More than 40% said that they would change their travel habits under certain conditions: for car sharing, some said that they would like to be able to return home in the event of an emergency, for example, while for cycling, the conditions cited included improved safety on the journey and alternatives in winter. Public transport would be more widely used if it were more accessible. Cyclists (who make up 13% of those who completed the survey) also mentioned that improvements to roads beyond the CERN site would make their journeys easier.

• What modes of transport do you use for professional travel?

Some 44% of you said that you travel for professional reasons at least once per week and a large number of these journeys are on the Meyrin site. More than 80% of you use a car for these journeys and 47% use your own vehicle for flexibility. You said that you would like to see an improvement in pedestrian paths. Additionally, CERN’s fleet of vehicles (rental cars and car sharing) is under-used, the reasons cited being complex procedures and collection points being too far away.

Of the users who took part in the survey, 41% said that they use the shuttle buses at least once a month, but users make up only 21% of the personnel. A desire for more frequent shuttle buses with extended operating hours emerged from the survey.

• What are the mobility initiatives at CERN?

This survey will allow the SMB department to offer improvements and new solutions to you in the coming months. For example, plans with a view to improving access to the site and the shuttle bus service and optimising the use of the vehicle and bicycle fleets are under consideration. Another important initiative concerns alternatives to private vehicles: proposals designed to facilitate car sharing and make it easier to walk or cycle to work are being drawn up. These proposals will be the subject of another survey, which will be submitted to you before the end of the year. Watch this space!
 

You can see the results of the survey here (in French).
See also the Word from Martin Steinacher, Director for Finance and Human Resources.

How many devices do you have at home? Plenty, no? Our physical life today is deeply entangled with our digital one. Best example: ask yourself where your smartphone is. Do you recall the nervousness and restlessness when you cannot find it immediately? Digital devices, i.e. laptops, tablets and smartphones, have become fundamental parts of our lives. We communicate with our friends and family, we take and store pictures and videos, we do Internet banking and shopping. Have you ever thought about the consequences if one or more of those devices was lost? Or stolen? Or compromised?

Our digital life today is centred around the laptops, tablets and smartphones we own. But have you ever thought about the consequences of those devices being stolen or compromised? Depending on the protective measures you have put in place, an attacker might be able to extract all the data from your device. All your personal documents. Bank statements. Confidential letters. Your private photos. Your family videos. Your music and videos. The attacker might use this material to blackmail you and extort money (see our Bulletin articles on “An old scam in a new disguise”; TBD, ““WannaCry”? The importance of being patched”, and “Ransomware - when it is too late..”). If your device is compromised and remotely accessed by the attacker, your private life becomes public. The attacker can follow online any activity on your device: registering every keystroke you make and waiting for you to type a password; taking videos or screenshots of your digital desktop, of all open windows, of your browser sessions and monitoring how you do Internet banking; enabling your web camera and your microphone to watch and listen to you while you believe you are safe in your home. All this gives an attacker ways to commit more crime. Going for the web services you have accessed, tweeting or posting in your name, buying at your expense, stealing money from your bank account, blackmailing you once more with the material recorded from your webcam and microphone… 

So, protect yourself and your family! Protect your private life! And once you have done that, protect your professional life and your CERN devices, too!

1. Make sure that all your computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets are up to date. Have your operating system’s update mechanism enabled and ensure that it is automatically applying any new security patches. If possible, run some decent antivirus software on it, and remember that CERN’s antivirus software for Windows computers and Macs is free to you, even for home use;

2. Do not click on links or attachments sent to you in unsolicited e-mails (remember “Curiosity clicks the link”?). Instead, check the context first: is the e-mail addressed to you? Is it relevant to you? Does it look legitimate? If in doubt, contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch. The same is true of browsing web pages. Watch where you click. Better to Stop – Think – Don’t click! Again, if in doubt, contact us;

3. Finally, back up your important data. CERN data should be backed up on AFS, DFS or EOS – services that are designed not to lose data. At home, back up to an external hard disk (but don’t keep it permanently connected!) or buy a network-attached storage (NAS) device. If you are blackmailed, it’s unfortunate, but do not pay any ransom. 

…and check out our best practices. 

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

The European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) has created a working group to examine the recognition of individual achievements in large scientific collaborations. Based on feedback from an initial survey of the leaders of 29 CERN-based or CERN-recognised experiments, ECFA found that the community is ready to engage in dialogue on this topic and receptive to potential recommendations.

In response, ECFA has launched a community-wide survey to verify how individual researchers perceive the systems put in place to recognise their achievements. The survey will be distributed widely, and can be found on the ECFA website (https://ecfa.web.cern.ch) with a deadline for responses by 26 October.

The results of the survey will be disseminated and discussed at the upcoming plenary ECFA meeting at CERN on 15–16 November. An open session during the morning of 15 November, also to be webcast, will be devoted to the discussion of the outcomes of the survey, and aims to gather input to be submitted to the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics.

This piece appeared in the October 2018 issue of the CERN Courier.

What is the purpose of the High-Luminosity LHC? What is the timeline for the construction work? Where will the work take place and what will it involve? CERN is heading out to meet its (your) neighbours to explain its latest big project. Following an initial lecture in the Globe on 4 September, CERN is organising a series of public meetings. Project leaders and scientists from CERN will present the project and answer questions at: 

- the Salle du Vidolet in Cessy at 8.00 p.m. on Tuesday, 9 October

- the École ALICE in Prevessin-Moëns at 8.00 p.m. on Thursday, 11 October

Further events are being arranged, including in Ferney-Voltaire. 

Encourage your neighbours to come and discover the future of CERN, armed with plenty of questions! To sign up and to find out more, see: voisins.cern/en

The Interparliamentary Union (IPU) is the world’s first permanent international political organization. It was established in 1889, 30 years before the League of Nations, which was then followed by the creation of the United Nations in 1945. The organization was initially dedicated to providing arbitration of conflicts among nations, but over time its mission evolved towards the promotion of democracy and inter-parliamentary dialogue. CERN and IPU signed a Cooperation Agreement in November 2016, with the aim to promote science and its potential for society among parliamentarians.

Today, the IPU organizes several events to promote dialogue about burning contemporary issues but the main appointments on its event calendar are the general assemblies, which gather thousands of parliamentarians from all the 178 current members. For the first time in the history of IPU, the General Debate of the 139^th IPU Assembly, which will be held in Geneva from 14 to 18 October 2018, will be themed around Science and Technology and the role of science and science education in the peaceful development of societies.

CERN will have a primary role in the Assembly, as CERN’s Director General, Fabiola Gianotti, has been invited to give the opening speech to the General Debate, and a CERN booth will be installed in the conference venue. In addition, a special side event on “Building bridges between the parliamentary and scientific communities” will take place on Tuesday 16 October. On this occasion, parliamentarians and scientists will engage in dialogue with a view to strengthening the role and impact of the scientific community in development.

Given the special occasion, the IPU is opening its doors to CERN people and Alumni who will have the opportunity to attend the General Debate from the gallery of the Centre de Conférence de Genève (CICG) from 15 to 17 October. Other events will also be open to the general public. Places are limited and registration is compulsory on this page.

The participation of scientists and, more directly, of CERN in the discussions taking place at the 139^th IPU General Assembly will also open the way to a new initiative, the IPU Science for Peace Schools, which aims at bringing science closer to parliamentarians and to help Parliaments define and implement in areas of political tension cross-border projects for the benefit of the people they represent.

Indeed, the peaceful and collaborative models developed by the world of science represent inspiring examples for inter-parliamentary cooperation. The first edition of the IPU Science for Peace Schools will be held at CERN from 18-24 November, and will address in particular selected staff from parliaments in the Middle East.

The new e-Procurement platform allows firms interested in working with us to register information proactively about their capabilities. While the Procurement Service currently uses a mixture of e-mail, post and even fax to place purchase orders, in the coming weeks CERN will start sending orders via this new platform.

What does it mean for suppliers?

We are currently rolling out the e-Procurement platform to suppliers currently registered in our database. Firms are being asked to register on the new platform and have been informed that in the future they will need to be on the platform in order to receive orders from us.

What changes for you?

The way you interface with suppliers and the Procurement Service will not change. You will continue to use EDH to raise department requests (DR) and purchase requisitions (DAI). However, if the chosen supplier does not exist in our database you will be asked to complete a simple registration request in EDH.

During the roll-out of the portal, you may receive questions from your suppliers about their registration. Please encourage firms to register at: https://procurement.cern.ch/aspx/Home and to watch the corresponding tutorials available at: https://videos.cern.ch/record/2299878; they will not be able to work with us in the future until they have done so! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact your Procurement Officer.

Are fake news mostly spread on the Internet by weird algorithms programmed by hackers? Could robots change the humanity’s destiny?

These and other burning topics will be the focus of the next TEDxCERN event, which will be held at Bâtiment des Forces Motrices in Geneva on 20 November. In line with the innovative approach started by TEDxCERN in 2013, also this edition will feature talks from the leaders of science and technology.

“The elephant in the room” is this year’s leitmotif of the event. “We want to address those controversial issues which are obviously present everywhere in our society but are avoided as a subject for discussion”, explains Claudia Marcelloni, curator of the event.

Building a coherent narrative with scientists coming from many different fields and backgrounds is not an easy task with the TED format being different from that of scientific conferences. “We do not focus on a topic and we do not look for a single ideal speaker who will talk about everything,” confirms Marcelloni. “Rather, we create a build-up around the narrative. TEDxCERN gives the scientist and the work behind him or her, which is usually accomplished with a team, the chance to be heard.”

TEDxCERN has grown rapidly over the years to become an extremely popular event with over 80 talks delivered by speakers from across the planet, 15 million views reached and over 10,000 mentions on social media. 

More information about the event here: https://tedxcern.web.cern.ch

The “Moving out of Academia to… Big Data” event held at CERN on 21 September was the second in a series that kicked off in June. It brought together about 150 alumni or soon-to-be alumni to obtain first-hand information from the panellists (all CERN Alumni) on how to prepare for a career move to the field of Big Data.

Big Data is virtually everywhere: in physics, of course, but also in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, in finance as well as travel and communication. The trend for data scientists is quite positive as techniques such as machine learning and artificial intelligence are growing rapidly. The field is therefore highly attractive to people with an experience working at CERN. However, as the speakers pointed out during the seminar, the landscape is changing for physicists: up to a few years ago, they were basically the only ones dealing with Big Data, but today the academic world offers dedicated diplomas and higher education in this field. Therefore, research scientists who plan their career move now need first to clarify for themselves what type of job they want and which type of company they would want to work for. Once they have done so, they have to prepare the “jump” carefully, which includes writing a dedicated CV that takes into account the needs of the private sector and also markets the skills acquired in academia using the language employed at companies.

These and other tips were thoroughly presented by the five speakers, who also engaged in active discussions with the members of the audience. They presented their own career moves as examples of successful transitions and described their typical day at work, discussed how to prepare for interviews and shared what kind of challenges a newcomer should expect from this sector. You can find a comprehensive summary of the discussions here, and the full recording of the event here.

The event was also an opportunity for everybody to network, which is one of the main scopes of the CERN Alumni Network. With over 3600 members, it is becoming the ideal place to share job and training opportunities, news and updates, tips and advice.

On Wednesday, 12 September, the third Machine Development (MD) block followed on from the summer luminosity production period. A packed programme of no less than 20 MDs have been successfully performed on various topics. The intensive MD programme finished on Monday, 17 September, signalling the start of a five-day technical stop (TS2), the last long technical stop before Long Shutdown 2 (LS2). There will be a short, three-day technical stop in week 44, prior to the lead-ion run, to prepare the detectors for ion collisions. 

In order to allow for an efficient technical stop recovery and return to luminosity production as quickly as possible, all groups working on the machine were requested to perform all necessary maintenance, but to avoid deploying new developments or non-essential upgrades to be tested during the last part of the run and instead to keep them on hold until LS2. In any case, a long commissioning phase will be required following LS2, during which many tests will be carried out.

On Monday, 24 September, the LHC fully recovered from TS2 and completed its “mini” intensity ramp up. The LHC is now back in luminosity production with 2556 bunches per beam, steaming ahead towards the 2018 luminosity goal of 60 fb^-1.

In the LHC schedule, there is a seven-day special run block placeholder in week 41, on the subject of which a final decision needs to be made. This run is labelled “low energy and high beta”, which means that collisions are planned at LHC injection energy, 450 GeV per beam, without squeezing the beam to small dimensions in the experiments. The main goal of this low-energy high-beta physics run is to measure the elastic cross-section of protons in a regime where the momentum of the protons only changes by a small amount. This region is interesting since different physical processes contribute to the scattering. At very low energies, electromagnetic scattering dominates, whereas at high energies, nuclear scattering dominates. In the intermediate energy range, these two processes interfere according to the laws of quantum mechanics. 

Physicists at the TOTEM and ATLAS/ALFA experiments have already made measurements of the elastic cross-section in this interference region at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV and 13 TeV. However, TOTEM’s published measurements at 13 TeV resulted in values lower than predicted by the known theoretical models. In addition, no measurements between 60 GeV and the TOTEM measurements exist so far. The LHC may offer a unique opportunity to close this gap and to compare the measurements with those made at Fermilab’s Tevatron with proton-antiproton collisions. 

In order to be able to detect the elastically scattered protons at very small angles, the TOTEM and ATLAS/ALFA detectors (Roman Pots) need to be moved very close to the beam. This is only possible with specially developed optics involving large ß* values at the interaction points. This and the low centre-of-mass energy lead to large beam sizes. Backgrounds induced by the beam-halo are extremely difficult to control in this configuration and will be the biggest challenge for this measurement.

Today, Tuesday, 2 October, a final beam test has been scheduled for this purpose. The test involves injecting a small number of bunches into the LHC and colliding them without acceleration. The machine settings, mainly relating to the collimators, will then be optimised to reduce the background for the experiments as much as possible. On the basis of this test, the experiments will then need to evaluate if the background is sufficiently suppressed to allow for good quality data-taking. Only then will a final decision be taken on whether the run will take place and when. Stay tuned…

The twenty-two flags of the CERN Member States are fluttering again in front of the Meyrin site. Last Friday, they were hoisted by scientists from each Member State during the inauguration ceremony of the Esplanade des Particules. With this, CERN’s official address is now “Esplanade des Particules 1”.

The Esplanade des Particules was constructed within the framework of the France-Vaud-Geneva conurbation project following an international urban planning competition. It was financed by the Swiss Confederation, the Republic and Canton of Geneva, the commune of Meyrin, and CERN.

Just after the inauguration, thousands of visitors traversed the Esplanade on the occasion of Researchers’ Night. Activities including workshops, projections, shows and visits were offered to the curious minds. The event was a great success: some 4000 people took part this year, compared to 1500 last year. Around one hundred volunteers were there to enthusiastically answer their questions.

In the past, “infections” were usually only a matter for PCs and laptops running Microsoft’s Windows operating systems. Windows users should (and, at CERN, must!) apply due diligence to protect their system by, for example, safe browsing and avoiding opening attachments from dubious sources (“Stop – Think – Don’t click”). Users of Linux or MacOS operating systems were thought to be less prone to such kinds of infections… but that is plain wrong.

Computer viruses usually exploit weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the underlying operating system. As the erstwhile market leader, Windows was the number one choice for cyber-attackers due to its large market share. The success rate in infecting Windows PCs was very high. But this has changed in two ways. First of all, MacOS has become very popular too, and cyber-attackers now also target devices running MacOS and iOS – as well as Android tablets and smartphones. Secondly, attackers are focusing less and less on the weaknesses of the operating system, but are increasingly looking into the vulnerabilities of software applications. The best outcome for hackers is if these applications work on all three major operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux), like Adobe Reader or Mozilla Firefox. With one good vulnerability, you can exploit them all… An excellent example is the recent publication of a vulnerability in the beloved “Ghostscript” application (and subsequently in “ImageMagick” and “GraphicsMagick”): with one malicious PDF, XPS, PS or EPS document and one single unsuspecting click by the innocent user, your Linux computer is a goner. The operating system infiltrated. All files exposed. Any communication tapped. This sort of thing from our Bulletin article on “Protect your Family”. Game over, Linux.

So, Linux and MacOS folks: do as the Windows people do. Be diligent when receiving unsolicited e-mails with weird attachments (see our Bulletin article on “A free click for your awareness”). Stop and think before clicking on weird-looking web links or URLs stemming from unknown or untrustworthy sources (“Curiosity clicks the link”). And always keep your operating system and all applications up-to-date. “Yum autoupdate” is your best friend.

_________

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

On Saturday, 13 October 2018, CERN was guest of honour of the City of Ferney-Voltaire for the Fête de la Science, organised by the association Pangloss in the gardens of the Château de Voltaire.

The historic Orangery and Garden have turned into a science village, housing the stands of nearly thirty associations and scientific institutions. 2,000 visitors of all ages came to enjoy the wide range of activities.

As a privileged guest, CERN offered a great number of activities. Visitors were able to visit the LHC and the Computing Centre with virtual-reality headsets. They analysed particle collisions in search of the Higgs boson with the "Connect the dots" activity. The little ones revisited the aesthetics of the ATLAS experiment with a colouring book. The majority of visitors left with a badge showing the elementary particle best reflecting their personality, after responding to the quiz “Particle Identities”. And physics demonstrations with everyday objects impressed both young and old.

A must-attend CERN activity, the three "Fun with Physics" shows have sold out! The impressive explorations of the states of matter and the effects of liquid nitrogen have met a great success.

Nearly 20 CERN volunteers brilliantly represented their laboratory, adapting perfectly to the expectations of the general public to explain their daily activities. Thank you to them!

________

Do you work at CERN and want to become a volunteer at local events? Join our Workplace Group CERN outreach events volunteers.

On 1 September 2018, a new spokesperson, Roberto Carlin, and two deputies, Patricia McBride and Luca Malgeri, took over at the helm of the CMS experiment for a period of two years.

The new team will lead the collaboration through an important period that will include analysis of the CMS 2018 data and the full 13-TeV dataset, the Long Shutdown 2 (LS2) activities, which involve completing Phase 1 upgrades and beginning Phase 2 construction, and preparation for LHC Run 3.

Read more on CMS website: "New management begins mandate (2018-2020)" 

Do you remember your first day at CERN? Were you excited, maybe a little nervous? So much to do, so much to know, so much to take in… On the first day of each month, new members of personnel join CERN to start a new chapter in their career. The adage “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” holds true: their first impressions are crucial, and can set the tone for the entire experience they will have over the coming months and years. 

In 2018, the HR Learning and Development and Talent Acquisition teams initiated a complete review of how we welcome newcomers. In the past, the comprehensive onboarding experience was dedicated to staff and fellows only, but our Director-General gave us the impetus to redesign the process based on a global concept that would meet the common core needs of all CERN’s members of personnel.

In close collaboration with all CERN departments, the resulting first ‘all-new’ Welcome Session took place on 1 April this year in the Globe of Science and Innovation. Every month since then, tens, and sometimes hundreds, of new staff members, fellows, students, trainees and associates have come together to meet each other and learn more about CERN as an organisation, its culture and spirit in an interactive welcome enabling them to connect and network before joining their respective departments.

However, the onboarding journey starts well before the arrival at CERN and continues months after. The Welcome Session is therefore complemented by a comprehensive “Welcome to CERN” website to support newcomers, providing information on what they need to know and what they need to do to prepare. Pascale Goy, Head of Learning and Development in CERN’s HR department, explains: “The newly streamlined and modernised programme experienced by our newcomers today is the result of an brainstorming exercise across the HR department and beyond. Over 50 people throughout CERN were involved in this change process. This project was an enriching experience and probably one of the best ways to delve into the inner workings of CERN.”

Once at CERN, newcomers, alongside new users who have recently joined CERN, are invited back to attend the quarterly onboarding session, where, equipped with their own experience of their first few months, they learn more about all the different facets of the Organization: from an introduction to CERN’s activities, Knowledge Transfer, the Library, clubs, the Staff Association, Education, Communication and Outreach… and more. At the end of this informative and interactive event, they also meet with the DG and Directors.

From left to right: Peter Jenni, deputy chairperson of the CERN & Society Foundation board, Martin Steinacher, Director for Finance and Human Resources and president of the Foundation for the Globe of Science and Innovation board, and Nathalie Leuenberger, member of the Foundation for the Globe of Science and Innovation board, after the official signature of the merger.

On 6 June 2018, the CERN & Society Foundation and the Foundation for the Globe of Science and Innovationjoined forces to become a single entity with the ultimate goal of broadening their impact on society and optimising fundraising activities. 

The Foundation for the Globe of Science and Innovation, established in 2007, and the CERN & Society Foundation, established in 2014, have in recent years successfully carried out complementary missions, sharing the overarching objective of promoting engagement in science in support of the broader mission of CERN. 

After the merger, thecombined Foundation will continue to have the name “CERN & Society Foundation”, and the existing partnerships and projects of the two foundations will be brought together. The mission and activities of the Foundation for the Globe of Science and Innovation will continue in the new framework.

Thanks to this merger, the enlarged CERN & Society Foundation will be able to take a more efficient and coordinated approach, better serving local and international communities.

“The enlarged Foundation will have the purpose to support and promote the dissemination, to the widest possible public, of the benefits of the mission of CERN through education and outreach, innovation and knowledge exchange, culture and art; and the support and promotion of any related activities,” says Matteo Castoldi, Head of Partnerships and Fundraising and Secretary of the Foundation Board, which together with the CERN Legal Service has been instrumental in the merger and will be in charge of raising funds on behalf of the enlarged entity.

The purpose of the Foundation extends to supporting the operation of the Globe of Science and Innovation and promoting its use, notably as a venue for scientific exhibitions, conferences, meetings and debates open to the general public, in the spirit in which the building was donated to CERN by the Swiss Confederation. The Foundation also supports the development of the Globe’s infrastructure and, in particular, the capital campaign for the Science Gateway.

Following approval by the Autorité fédérale de surveillance des fondations, the merger entered into force on 11 October 2018. The Foundation for the Globe of Science and Innovation ceased to exist that same day.

The last LHC Report mentioned that the schedule contained a seven-day special run block placeholder in week 41 for the low-energy and high-beta run and that a final decision on the subject would be made following a test run on Tuesday, 2 October.

The results of this test were analysed by the ATLAS-ALFA and TOTEM experiments and, after discussion with the machine teams on the run strategy, it was ultimately decided to perform the run, but to shift its start to Thursday, 11 October and limit its duration to six days, which means we will have another week of luminosity production before ending the proton run on 23 October.

The set-up of the required machine conditions was very efficient and the machine availability during this special run was higher than anticipated. As a result, the special physics run was completed earlier than expected on Sunday night, with over a million events per experiment, allowing the luminosity production to resume two days earlier than scheduled. Unfortunately, during the weekend, a filter in the cryogenics system at Point 8 started to clog, reducing the cooling capacity to less than that required for the high luminosity production. Consequently, it was decided on Monday morning to dedicate some time to solving the issue. Therefore, beam operation was not resumed until early on Tuesday morning, leaving one extra day for luminosity production nevertheless.

During the LHC Performance workshop that was held in Chamonix last January, a promise was made that if the luminosity production made it possible to reach the goal of 60 fb^-1 for both ATLAS and CMS, extra machine development (MD) days would be allocated towards the end of the run in order to cope with the long list of topics to be studied before LS2.

Last week, just before starting the special physics run, this goal was reached and, as a result, four extra MD days were added to the final schedule, bringing the total number of days for the MD4 block to seven. This gave the MD coordination team an additional task, as well as the injectors team, who, besides making the final adjustments for the production of the lead ion beam, now also have to prepare and adjust the additional beam configurations required for the LHC MDs. This increases the workload during what is already a busy period, when everybody wants to take advantage of the last protons before LS2.

Early in September, a massive device weighing 224 tonnes and measuring 15 metres in length was loaded onto a barge in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. After navigating the Rhine river all the way to Basel, the whole structure took to the road bound for Geneva in a 66-metre-long convoy. Over the following six days, it moved at 10 km/h on average, mostly travelling at night. The final destination: CERN. On the morning of 4 October at 4.30 a.m., the behemoth arrived.

The spectacular shipment was CERN’s newest and biggest power transformer, for the new BE2 electrical substation that is located strategically between the Laboratory’s Meyrin and Prévessin sites. The substation has been built to provide redundancy to the existing 66-kilovolt (kV) electrical substation located in Prévessin, which is used to supply critical loads, such as those relating to the LHC. The new transformer is so massive that the complex process of unloading it took four full days.

Transformers are typically used to increase the voltage along the transmission path (step-up transformers) or to decrease it (step-down transformers), through electromagnetic induction. Electricity is transferred from power plants at high voltages and arrives at CERN at 400 kV. This must ultimately be lowered to 66 kV or 18 kV, the levels at which much of the Laboratory’s electrical equipment operates, by means of step-down transformers.

The newly arrived 400 kV power transformer will be the sixth such device in CERN’s fleet. With a height of 9.7 metres, a length of 15.8 metres and a width of 3.9 metres, the completely assembled transformer will weigh 331.9 tonnes, making it twice as large as any of the existing power transformers at CERN. Baptised “Olive” for the olive-green colour of its tank, it will be filled with 82 000 litres of insulation oil once it is fully installed. It will be energised in early December, and is scheduled to be fully operational at the beginning of 2019. Olive will supply CERN for a significant part of the second Long Shutdown (LS2), when the other five 400 kV transformers are shut down for maintenance.

Olive is designed to respect the strictest environmental standards, and its specially constructed noise-cancellation panels make it extremely quiet for a power transformer of its size. In addition, the new BE2 electrical substation contains an advanced oil-retention and fire-suppression system to protect the environment in the unlikely event of a fire or an oil leak.

“The new BE2 electrical substation relies on industrial products and services from Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Spain and Hungary through several contracts placed by CERN. A number of pieces of high-voltage equipment in the existing 400 kV substation in Prévessin will also be replaced during LS2 in the framework of the project”, says Marko Wolf, project manager in the EN-EL group.

This substation is the result of more than four years of work in conjunction with multiple stakeholders, notably RTE France (Réseau de Transport d’Electricité), who built an additional transmission feeder bay in their 400 kV Bois-Tollot substation to connect to the BE2 substation.