CERN will showcase some of its most promising technologies and spin-off companies to some 250,000 expected visitors at the world’s biggest industrial fair, the Hannover Messe in Germany. On a stand shared with the European Space Agency, CERN’s Knowledge Transfer group will display a variety of potentially high-impact technologies and introduce some of its spin-off companies as co-exhibitors. The shared stand is a first tangible implementation of the bilateral agreement on cooperation signed by CERN and ESA on 28 March. Hannover Messe starts today and ends on 11 April.

"There is a long history of scientific exchange and cooperation between CERN and ESA," says Enrico Chesta, head of Technology Transfer in CERN’s Knowledge Transfer group. "They are operating in very different fields, but their goals are similar: both conduct fundamental research, and both drive innovation for research-specific technologies that can in turn be useful for society. Our joint stand in the central R&D hall at Hannover Messe is a visible demonstration of our commitment and effort to sustain the competitiveness of industry and promote high-tech ventures in our member states."

Visitors will be able to test the outstanding thermal properties of new materials developed at CERN, observe the performance of the world’s highest-efficiency solar collector, witness precision tracking based on technology that could revolutionise areas as diverse as transport logistics or football training, or examine a Kinder Surprise – a chocolate egg containing a plastic toy – under a mobile CT scanner to reveal its contents without breaking the egg. CERN and ESA have invited several companies that have developed out of ideas born in particle physics or space research to present their products and will also showcase some promising technologies available for licensing.  

"Promoting CERN’s technologies on a pavilion shared with ESA is also a way to highlight the important synergies between particle physics and space in many technical areas such as advanced materials, surface treatments and rad-hard electronics," says Chesta. Hannover Messe, whose partner country this year is Holland, is renowned as a platform for the latest technological and industrial trends.

The last time CERN took an invention to Hannover was in 1977. It presented an accelerator-control system converted into drink dispenser – "apparently the first application of the capacitive touch screen in the world," according to the CERN Courier.

Visit the CERN-ESA stand at Hannover Messe Hall 2 stand D54 and stay tuned for more details on their high-impact technologies.

At a ceremony today in Hong Kong, the Internet Society inducted CERN computer scientist Ben Segal into the Internet Hall of Fame.

Launched by the Internet Society in 2012, the Internet Hall of Fame in its virtual museum celebrates individuals for their significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet.

Segal was awarded the honour Global Connector, recognizing individuals from around the world who have made significant contributions to the global growth and use of the Internet.

Segal joined CERN's Data Handling Division in 1971 and worked in the field of computer communications. One early project was "STELLA"– an experiment that linked CERN by high-speed satellite connection with five other European research laboratories. He also worked on networking heterogeneous computer systems at CERN, including the gatewaying of workstations and UNIX systems to each other and to the CERN mainframes (IBM, CDC, Vax and Cray).

From 1985 to 1988, as CERN's first official "TCP/IP Co-ordinator", Segal was responsible for coordinating the introduction of the Internet protocols within CERN. He also taught TCP/IP, Unix and distributed computing from 1986 to 2002 in many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Segal joins three other CERN members of the Internet Hall of Fame including World Wide Web innovators Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, and Internet innovator François Flückiger.

The award ceremony for the 24 inductees is scheduled for 8 April at 6pm Hong Kong time.

The CLIC accelerator collaboration has elected a new spokesperson. Phil Burrows of the University of Oxford succeeds Roberto Corsini of CERN. Over the next three years, Phil will be engaging with the institutes that are members of CLIC and helping to ensure that CLIC’s R&D programme pushes ahead during the critical phase ahead of the next update of the European strategy for particle physics. Roberto will continue his technical leadership of CLIC/CTF3.

The most recent European strategy for particle physics was published in 2013. Recognizing the international collaborations that will be needed to make scientific advances, it sets out the future priorities for European particle physics research.

The strategy is due to be updated in 2018, and that’s likely to be the timescale for decisions on the future direction for CLIC. With other potential successors to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the table, Burrows says there will be tough decisions to be made about the best choice for the next big particle physics machine in Europe. "Any future proposed project would be expensive to build. We might be able to afford one in Europe, but definitely not two or more."

"CLIC remains the only viable technology today that could take us to multi-TeV centre of mass electron-positron collisions," he says. "But we need more LHC results to assess whether it is the right machine to take us into new areas of physics research. LHC results over the next few years of running at higher energy and luminosity will be key to determining the way forward.”

The LHC has already discovered the Higgs boson. The proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) in Japan is, in essence, a Higgs and top-quark factory for better understanding these particles. If the LHC finds evidence of additional new particles, for example supersymmetric particles, around the 1TeV mass scale, there could be a compelling physics argument for CLIC. In this and other scenarios there could also be strong motivation to pursue a high-energy proton-proton or electron-positron supercollider.

Using the CLIC Test Facility (CTF3), the key concepts of CLIC have already been tested and proved. Probably the most innovative element of the CLIC design is that it has two beams – a drive beam and a main beam. "We’ve demonstrated that it is possible to transfer energy from the drive beam and feed it to the main beam," says Burrows. "Now we need to work on more of the technical implementation and system optimization, not least how to mass produce the components that we need – essential for keeping the cost of the project as low as possible."

For the next few years, the focus is definitely on CLIC R&D, but Phil will undoubtedly have more than half an eye on results coming out of the LHC when it starts operating again in 2015.

Tacked on to the side of the Antiproton Decelerator (AD), this building will soon house the cleaning rooms, workshops and generators for the kickers of the AD and the future Extra Low Energy Antiproton ring, ELENA.

"Today we’re celebrating the completion of a project which, I’m happy to say, has gone very well," says François Butin, technical coordinator of the ELENA project (EN-MEF Group). "The deadlines and budgets have been perfectly respected and the building fully complies with our specifications. A great vote of thanks to GS-SE and the outside contractors who have enabled us to complete this project."

Some 10,000 tonnes of earth had to be moved by around 500 trucks. The presence of the TT2 transfer tunnel directly beneath the building posed a number of technical challenges. A shielding slab 800 millimetres thick was implemented to protect the building from radiation.

Christian Carli, ELENA Project Leader (BE-ABP Group), says: "The installation of the ELENA machine is approaching fast. The project's Technical Design Report has just been published and the work is progressing well, including on the transfer-line side." ELENA’s magnetic deceleration ring, 30 metres in circumference, will be installed in the AD hall mid-2015 and its research programme should begin two years later.

Due to the 'Heartbleed bug'– a serious vulnerability that affects many different internet services – you will need to change your CERN passwords before 13 May 2014. Failure to change your passwords may mean your accounts could be blocked.

Most CERN computing services were not vulnerable, but CERN takes computer security very seriously. As a preventive measure the computer security team are asking all owners of CERN computing accounts to now change their passwords.

Passwords can be changed on the CERN account management website. You will get a dedicated email message if you have not yet taken any action.

For all computer security matters please refer to cern.ch/security

A new version of the Engineering and Equipment Data Management Service (EDMS) – a system used to manage technical data and data concerning CERN equipment – is now available.

A unique interface for all data linked to CERN’s engineering work, EDMS currently stores more than 1.2 million documents containing almost 2 million files, guaranteeing the transfer of protected information and knowledge to future generations of engineers and scientists at CERN, be it the design data and documentation for a specific object (technical specifications, test procedures, non-conformities, drawings, etc.) or technical information about the laboratory’s infrastructure and scientific equipment.

In a few months, the new EDMS 6 system will definitively replace the current system, offering its 13,000 users a more modern and intuitive interface that meets their expectations. “We've been working in close collaboration with some of the system’s most frequent users to develop this new version of EDMS,” says Aleksandra Wardzinska, EDMS 6 Project Leader. “We carried out the first tests in January 2013 with a panel of key users, thanks to whom we were able to improve the system and integrate some new functions that they really wanted.”

These new functions include a simple drag-and-drop method for downloading EDMS files, an improved tree structure and easy right-click access to certain options, to name just a few. “We wanted to make this interface more interactive and user-friendly for everyone,” says Rachel Bray, Product Lifecycle Management and Document Management Specialist. “It will make life much easier for new arrivals and members of the personnel who are less familiar with EDMS, as well as for those who use it every day.”

The new version of EDMS, which can already be accessed from the interface of the current system, will continue to evolve over the next few months (keep an eye on the News panel of the new EDMS 6 home page for updates on these changes and consult the tutorials here). To continue improving this new management system, its team of developers needs you! So start using EDMS 6 today and send your comments to edms.support@cern.ch.

Social media guidelines are now available for all CERN contributors (i.e. staff members, fellows, apprentices, associates, users or students), who comment professionally or privately about their activities at CERN using social media.

Social media activities, from posts on Twitter and Facebook, to blogs, interactive forums and commenting features of websites, often blur the lines between private and public, personal and professional. Getting the balance right between sharing your knowledge, experiences, opinions, feelings and life and respecting the CERN Code of Conduct, CERN Computing Rules and, for CERN personnel, the Staff Rules and Regulations can be challenging. If your posts include mention of or make reference to CERN, it is worth reflecting on whether your subject, message and choice of words are appropriate.

In order to guide you, the CERN Communications Group, HR Department, Legal Service and Computer Security Team have developed some guidelines on how best to use social media, for your benefit and that of the Organization. These cover how to post responsibly, correctly, clearly and reasonably. They ask you to be cautious with external sources or products, and require you to respect CERN’s rules and its reputation, as well as privacy, confidentiality and intellectual property.

Read the CERN social media guidelines

In addition, you can follow CERN’s activities on social media via Twitter (EN / FR), Facebook, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn and the Quantum Diaries blogs (EN / FR).  

[This is an edited version of the recent CERN Bulletin Computer Security article.]

At the CERN training centre this week, Pawel Grzywaczewski of the IT Operating systems and Infrastructure Services group presented the Lync system.

The Lync service provides collaboration features such as phone calls, instant messaging, a presence indicator, integration with the Exchange calendar, desktop sharing and more. People activated on the Lync phone system can use Lync IP phones, or connect through a computer or device with the Lync application installed.

The Lync application is also available on smartphones (iPhone, Android, Windows Phones). Grzywaczewski says he particularly appreciates the mobility. "Having Lync on a smartphone or on a laptop means having the CERN work number with me. I find a WiFi spot and I’m avoiding the roaming charges while abroad".

The system shares some features with Skype: you can call contacts with a single click, search for CERN people, or set your options to forward calls to other numbers, devices or voicemail. "It has really simplified the way I work," says Grzywaczewski. "In a few clicks I can talk to people, get an answer and take decisions much quicker than before."

Grzywaczewski's presentation covered the main features of Lync, including instant messaging, staying connected when you are on the move as if you are in your office, creating and participating in online meetings, sharing presentations or desktops with other people, and integrating with Outlook, the CERN phone book and more. In a demonstration, Grzywaczewski connected to his colleague Fernando Moreno Pascual by video call, sharing a Powerpoint document which they edited together onscreen.

Lync IP phones are recommended for new installations and to replace analog phones at CERN, but not for emergency services such as the fire brigade. (Critical services use special red phones that are dependent neither on the TCP/IP network nor on electrical power.)

All CERN people have a Lync account. Today, the system is deployed on all centrally managed Windows machines at CERN and is also available on Mac and Pidgin in Linux. Your profile information is shared across Microsoft applications, including Lync, Outlook, and CERN social.

To move from a standard phone to Lync, request a migration to the system through EDH. Lync handsets are now available at the CERN store.

For more information visit the official Lync service site and to take part in the Lync community at CERN visit the social site.

The final M weld for the LHC splice consolidation work was performed on Wednesday. The process is explained in images.

Three young entrepreneurs inspired by their time at CERN have launched ProtonMail, a secure email service with a sophisticated encryption system to deter would-be spies.

Computer scientist Andy Yen has been working at CERN since 2009 through his home institutes CalTech and Harvard University in the US. Along with two of his CERN colleagues he recently co-founded a startup company called ProtonMail.

ProtonMail is a new service that provides encrypted email. "The technology means that our email system does not allow us (or anyone else) to read user emails," says Yen. "Access to user data is technically impossible because of the way we have implemented encryption."

The end-to-end encryption means that when you send an email with ProtonMail, your data is already encrypted by the time it reaches the their servers. So the team has no access to your messages, and as they cannot decrypt them, they cannot read them or share them with third parties.

The idea for the company was born last summer in a CERN cafeteria where CERN physicists and engineers regularly share ideas over lunch or coffee.

"Our team met at CERN and early ProtonMail hackathons were held at the famous CERN Restaurant One," says Yen. "We would not be where we are today without the assistance of the over 300 CERN students and staff who offered to test our service, and the informal advice and feedback given to us by members of the CERN computer security team."

"CERN is a true hub for technological collaboration and it's an environment fostering entrepreneurship," says Giovanni Anelli, head of CERN's Knowledge Transfer group. "Over 10,000 scientists from more than 100 different countries and 600 universities and institutes collaborate today with CERN. Knowledge sharing among this large academic community is essential in the scientific discourse and inspires many additional new ideas. ProtonMail is one such example."

ProtonMail was launched last week to the general public. Their Threat Model describes both the threats ProtonMail is designed to guard against, and also the threats it is not designed to counter. 

The new Building SL53 on CERN’s Cessy site in France is ready to welcome the thousands of visitors (30,000 in 2013) who come to learn about CMS each year. It boasts low energy consumption and the possibility, in the future, of being heated by recycling the heat given off by the detector.

“Constructed by the GS Department and the firm Dimensione, the building meets the operational requirements of the CMS experiment, which require the uninterrupted use of its infrastructure,” explains Martin Gastal, the member of the collaboration in charge of the project.

Its 560 m² surface area features a meeting room, eight offices, an open space for CMS users, a rest area with a kitchen, sanitary facilities including showers, and a conference room in which to receive visitors. “The new conference room on the ground floor can accommodate 50 people,” says Martin. “It will enable us to introduce a new itinerary for CMS site visits and, along with the notable enlargement of the external car park, will increase the capacity and quality of the visits.”

The focus of the building is on its energy performance: compact and with improved insulation thanks to the low-emissivity triple glazing and sun-shading, SL53 was designed from the beginning to keep its primary energy consumption to a minimum. “Domestic hot water is produced by solar panels and we have installed a high-performance reversible heat pump that can heat and cool the building,” Martin explains. “In addition, all the air-exchange circuits are equipped with an energy-recovery system and the building also has 'smart' systems that control the temperature based on the occupancy of a room, automatic lighting (LED) and no false ceilings, which act as hot/cold air pockets.”

The future is even greener for SL53 as the building will be used as a prototype to evaluate the potential of the technology used to recycle the energy dissipated in the cooling towers. Indeed, the heat from the water used to cool the detector could be recycled, by injecting it into the floor heating system of the building.

Last Saturday, 31 May, CERN joined in the Genève200 celebrations, parading a superconducting magnet through the city’s narrow streets on a 20-metre lorry, from the Parc des Bastions to the Port Noir. It was also an opportunity to remind everyone that this year marks 60 years of science for peace at CERN.

The magnet spent almost three hours among the huge crowds, as 30,000 people descended on the harbour in the sunshine to celebrate the bicentenary of Confederate troops landing at the Port Noir, heralding Geneva’s integration into Switzerland.

This grand parade, a combination of the historical and the contemporary in the form of a historical retrospective, featured 1200 participants and took the people of Geneva back in time to 1814. The immersion into the past was complete with police officers and period firefighters in period uniforms and even period vehicles, much to the delight of the general public. With a nod to CERN and the LHC, the 21^st Century was not forgotten.

The parade then passed in front of the official guests, who included representatives of each canton and of Geneva’s cantonal and communal authorities, as well as the President of the Confederation, Didier Burkhalter.

The event was a true reflection of Geneva – a real cultural, artistic, social and scientific patchwork.

For information about upcoming CERN60 events, see www.cern.ch/cern60

CERN offers a wide range of online services to its community, including email, electronic document handling, data management, and much more. Thanks to CERN’s single sign-on technology, these can already be accessed using just one set of access credentials. However, an agreement signed with SWITCH, the national research and education network of Switzerland, means that access to such online services is about to get even easier, particularly for CERN’s many off-site collaborators.

CERN has signed up to use the SWITCH Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure (SWITCHaai), which enables collaborators to access online services at participating research institutions in Switzerland via a single username and password. This means that they will be able to access a range of CERN’s online services without having to sign up for a CERN account. Equally, the move means that certain CERN members of the personnel will now be able to use their CERN single sign-on credentials to access online services provided by other participating research institutions and universities in Switzerland. The SWITCHaai technology is already extremely popular across the country, where it is used daily by almost 98% of Swiss university members.

“International collaboration plays an essential role in our scientific activities,” says Frédéric Hemmer, head of CERN IT department. “Joining the SWITCHaai federation is an important step as our community will be able to connect in an easier way to our services and resources thanks to the use of a single set of access credentials. ”

The agreement with SWITCH has important benefits for the worldwide CERN research community. Through SWITCHaai, researchers will have access to EduGAIN, a Europe-wide identity federation created by the GÉANT project. This means that CERN collaborators at institutions across the globe will be able to access CERN’s online services using the access credentials from their home institutions. Again, the agreement is a two-way street: certain CERN members of personnel will also be able to access selected services provided by the other institutions participating in EduGAIN through their national federations.

“Identity federation is a key topic for computing in the coming years,” says Romain Wartel, the security officer of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid at CERN. “It enables people and services to be connected on a large scale in a convenient and efficient way, opening new possibilities for research communities.”

"SWITCH strongly believes that federated identity provides many benefits for the large distributed scientific collaborations and projects that have been characteristic of high-energy physics for many years,” says Christoph Witzig, head of Central ICT Providers at SWITCH. “As such, SWITCH is happy that CERN has decided to join the SWITCHaai federation and is looking forward for a mutually beneficial collaboration."

CERN's clubs have organized a range of activities next week to celebrate CERN's 60th anniversary year. All activities are open to CERN people and free of charge.

On Monday 23 June, from 12.15 – 1.30pm, the Yoga Club will hold a Vinyasa Yoga class on the lawn in front of Restaurant 1, by the Allée Pierre Auger.

Later the same day, the Frisbee club is holding a mini-tournament for four teams. Teams can register here until Thursday, 19 June. The final team rosters will be e-mailed to the team captains on Friday 20 June. Matches begin at 6pm.

Pop into building 567/R-021 any day next week from 4 – 6pm to visit an exhibition by the Computing Club. The attractions will include a 3D printer and Lego robots. On Wednesday 25 June the Robotics section of the club is holding a robot competition in Restaurant 1 from 6 – 8pm. Open to all members of CERN.

On Thursday 26 June from 5.30 – 10pm the Football Club is holding the final of the CERN Outdoor Football Tournament at the Saint-Genis Pouilly football ground. The event marks not only 60 years of science but also 50 years of football at CERN. Bring your friends, family and guests. You can also watch an exhibition game for the arriving summer students and test your football skills on the famous German "Torwand". Food and drinks will be offered.

There will also be events from the CERN Fitness and Zumba clubs, concerts and even a regatta!

For all this and more check the detailed schedule of events for CERN clubs week.

After studying visual arts, Lison Bernet worked as a lock keeper, waitress, grape picker, farm labourer and chef before finally returning to her first love: drawing. Today a scientific illustrator, Lison is the author of the cartoon strip "La BD du LHC", which she draws every month for LHC France (by CNRS/IN2P3 and CEA/Irfu, see here).

Lison’s career path might seem somewhat chaotic, but it is a reflection of the artist herself: original and passionate. “I never do anything by half measures. When I got into cooking for example [Lison took a chef training course for adults], I became completely wrapped up in it. I even went as far as cooking roasts during my lunch hour, just for practice…” says Lison. On completing the course, Lison got a job as a chef on a canal boat. And it was then that she got the drawing bug again. “I started keeping an illustrated travel diary,” she says. “I used to sit and draw at the table between shifts.”

In 2006 her career as an artist took off. Because her brother was working as a physicist in the CMS collaboration, Lison had the opportunity to visit CERN and found that it was fascinating and not at all as she had imagined: “The rather outlandish notion I’d had of physics quickly gave way to great curiosity, which I soon felt the need to satisfy through my drawings.” In 2008, spurred on by the start-up of the LHC, Lison offered her services as an illustrator to LHC France, for which she has been working ever since, and La BD du LHC was born.

“Science, let alone particle physics, was not really one of my favourite subjects,” explains Lison. “So I had to go back to basics and start again. I’ve learned a huge amount from the physicists, and I talk to them a lot. They are a big help to me, especially when starting a new comic strip; I always ask them to read my storyboard outlines before I start drawing.” Working closely with them enables Lison to explain subtly and with humour concepts as complex as the birth of the Universe,matter-antimatter annihilation, quarks and gluons, the Higgs field, superconductivity (both here andhere), or even the process behind peer review or naming the famous boson.

To start with, Lison combined working as a chef with drawing, but she is now a full-time illustrator. “My job gives me access to the most fascinating places,” says Lison enthusiastically. “At CERN I’ve been able to see the CMS, ALICE, LHCb and ATLAS experiments. And I was lucky enough to spend three days with the engineers working on the SMACC project, who were brilliant at explaining it all and were such nice people!”

This year, to mark CERN’s 60th anniversary, CNRS and CEA will paint the portrait of 60 members of the French team working at the LHC, in an exhibition of photo and comic portaits including, of course, Lison Bernet. Discover these on LHC France throughout the month of July.

To see Lison’s work, take a look at her blog, or go to her online portfolio.

For more information about what Lison does, click here. (Lison is curious about science in the broadest sense, so feel free to contact her about illustrating other scientific subjects.)

This week, scientists from CERN were among those attending a Wilton Park meeting, held near Geneva on 23-25 July, where experts were invited to examine the different world-views of science, philosophy and theology, and consider what they share in terms of understanding.

This is the second time CERN scientists have attended the Wilton Park conference; in 2012 a meeting on the theme of "Science, theology and the big bang" aimed develop a common framework for dialogue between science and theology. The aim of this second conference is to widen the spectrum of scientists, theologians and philosophers involved and to deepen the dialogue towards a common understanding of truth.

Wilton Park is a forum for analysing and advancing the agenda on global policy challenges, bringing international experts together under the same roof to discuss issues of topical relevance. It organizes more than 50 events each year, providing a neutral environment where conflicting views can be expressed and debated calmly.

The meeting, which was organized in partnership with CERN, enabled scientists from a range of disciplines to enter into dialogue with philosophers and theologians from the world religions about the nature of the big bang theory. A report will be available in due course.

The Universe of Particles exhibition in CERN's Globe of Science and Innovation has won a certificate of excellence from the travel website TripAdvisor.

On TripAdvisor people can review hotels and exhibitions, give travel advice and suggestions, and vote for their favourite places to visit. The voting is entirely up to the website's users – the company does not intervene in the process.

Rolf Landua of CERN's Education and Outreach group was delighted to hear of the award, as it shows that the exhibition stands on its own merit. "We do not actively encourage people to write reviews for us, so this award really comes directly from happy exhibition visitors," he says.

CERN's Globe of Science and Innovation is an unmissable landmark, dominating the landscape just outside CERN's Meyrin campus in Switzerland. Universe of Particles was created by the design studio Atelier Bruckner and opened at the Globe in July 2010. Since then, more than 260,000 people have visited.

Through spherical display cases and interactive information screens, the exhibition presents an insight into the world of fundamental particles and the workings of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Audiochairs play recordings of interviews with top particle physicists, and important objects from the history of CERN and particle physics are on display, including a replica of Ernest Lawrence first cyclotron, cross sections of LHC magnets and the first World Wide Web server. At regular intervals and with impressive visual effects, an immersive projection on the exhibition walls explains the basics of the particle physics, from the creation of matter in the big bang to CERN research today.

Universe of Particles is open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm. Admission is free

“Science is beautiful but also extremely useful,” former ATLAS Spokesperson, Fabiola Gianotti told an audience of thousands this week at the opening plenary session of EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) 2014, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

ESOF is an open platform for debating science and a showcase for European and global research. This year's theme – Science Building Bridges– aimed to raise the public awareness of science and to strengthen the links between science and society. 

Present at Gianotti's speech were Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso and Danish Minister for Higher Education and Science, Sophie Carsten Nielsen. Participants at the conference ranged from scientists and researchers, journalists and science communicators to representatives of industry and policy makers. Gianotti and CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer spoke of the importance of fundamental research in a lively discussion about CERN and the world of particle physics.

Heuer told the conference delegates that of more than 30,000 particle accelerators in the world, about 15,000 are used in hospitals, a similar number are used in industry, while the remaining are used for scientific research. He also addressed his global vision for membership of CERN, saying, “Diversity is an opportunity. We have redefined the E in CERN from ‘Europe’ to ‘everywhere’.” Gianotti agreed: “Science doesn’t see borders. Is a huge unifying force. Our work is not just a scientific adventure; it is also a human adventure with very good life lessons.”

Four other sessions during the conference involved CERN scientists or those working on the LHC. The audience at “Detectives of the microcosm” were taken on a whirlwind journey covering over five decades of particle physics, as Tiziano Camporesi of CMS, Stephanie Hansmann-Menzerner of LHCb, Samira Hassani of CEA/IRFU in France and André Mishcke of ALICE presented an overview of LHC results in a session moderated by CERN’s Head of Communication, James Gillies.

CERN’s Life Sciences Advisor Manjith Dosanjh moderated a session on cancer detection and treatment, and, along with CERN's Director for Research and Scientific Computing, Sergio Bertolucci and former CERN Director-General Chris Llewellyn Smith, also participated in an EIROforum-organized session called “Decoding the origin, fabric, and fate of life and the Universe”. Finally, former LHCb Spokesperson, Tatsuya Nakada, spoke at the session “What the Higgs do we do now?” on the global perspectives for the future of particle physics.

CERN also formally announced the restart schedule for the LHC, at a media briefing session at ESOF on 23 June.

As of today, LHCb, one of the four biggest experiments at the LHC, will have a new management. Ahead are the huge challenges of run 2 and the following long technical shutdown during which LHCb will undergo a major upgrade. In the meantime, the discovery of new physics could be a dream within reach.

“We have to make sure that the detector wakes up after its long hibernation and goes back to data taking in the most efficient way and that we are able to process all these data to produce high-quality physics results,” says Guy Wilkinson, new Spokesperson of the LHCb collaboration. Although this already sounds like a considerable “to-do” list for the coming months, it’s just the beginning of a much longer and ambitious plan. “The previous management has done an excellent job in analysing the data we took during run 1. They also put on a very sound footing the LHCb upgrade, which is a major project set to begin operation after the second long shut-down.”

During the 2018-2019 shutdown, the LHCb collaboration plans to change the electronics throughout all of the subdetectors, in addition to installing a new vertex detector, RICH detector, tracker and trigger system. “We will operate at higher luminosity and will readout our detector at a higher rate,” explains Wilkinson. “In this way, we will be able to benefit more from the huge rate of beauty and charm production at the LHC.”

The ambitious upgrade programme will be undertaken by the whole collaboration, including several new institutes that have joined in recent years. “The scientific community interested in flavour physics saw what a good job we did during run 1 and they want to come onboard and be part of this run 2 exploitation,” comments Wilkinson. “They have been particularly excited by the challenge of building the new subdetectors that we will need for the experiment's upgrade.”

“The coming years are going to be particularly difficult because we’ll be taking data, analysing data and starting to construct the new detectors. The real challenge for the new management will be juggling these balls simultaneously. Often this will involve the same people so people will be very busy,” adds Monica Pepe-Altarelli, new Deputy Spokesperson of the LHCb collaboration.

There are indeed very exciting physics possibilities for LHCb during both run 2 and after the planned upgrade. Some of their results from run 1 hint at slight tensions with the Standard Model. These might go away but the only way to progress is to keep studying these phenomena with the new data. “Our dream would be to make sufficiently precise measurements so that eventually something that cannot be explained in the Standard Model does indeed show up unambiguously,” says Wilkinson. “So far, there has been no direct observation of any new particles associated with physics beyond the Standard Model. However, the precise studies of relatively low energy phenomena that we perform are in principle very sensitive to the contribution of such new particles, for example those predicted by supersymmetry. Our hope is to find incontrovertible evidence of their existence in our data.”

Although maintaining the excellent performance of the detector, preparing for the upgrade and keeping one of the world’s highest scientific publication rates per member are Guy Wilkinson’s objectives, his priorities are clear. “We want to make sure that LHCb remains a happy collaboration and that all people involved feel that they have equal stake, equal responsibility and can take equal pride from the achievements of the experiment. We are starting from a very good place but the management will certainly be responsive, open and encouraging particularly young people and women physicists who might want to come and speak to us and tell us their ideas and hopes for the experiment. My wish is that we will be perceived as an open management and I do hope that time will confirm this,” he concludes.

Scientists leading the work of the ALICE collaboration have been awarded the European Physical Society's Lise Meitner Prize 2014. Johanna Stachel of Heidelberg University in Germany, Peter Braun-Munzinger of GSI in Germany, Paolo Giubellino of INFN Torino and CERN, and Jürgen Schukraft of CERN shared the award, which is given every two years for outstanding work in the fields of experimental, theoretical or applied nuclear science.

The prize was awarded specifically "for their outstanding contributions to the experimental exploration of the quark-gluon plasma using ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions, in particular to the design and construction of ALICE and shaping its physics programme and scientific results bringing to light unique and unexpected features of a deconfined state of strongly-interacting matter at the highest temperatures ever produced in the laboratory."

Quark-gluon plasma is a state of matter thought to have existed in the first moments after the big bang. For a few millionths of a second, the universe was filled with an astonishingly hot, dense soup made of all kinds of particles moving at near light speed. This mixture was dominated by quarks – fundamental bits of matter – and by gluons, carriers of the strong force that normally “glue” quarks together into familiar protons and neutrons and other species. In those first moments of extreme temperature, however, quarks and gluons free to move on their own in what’s called quark-gluon plasma. The ALICE experiment at CERN is specialized to study quark-gluon plasma recreated in high-energy collisions of heavy ions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

"The study of the quark-gluon plasma is a truly fascinating journey," says Giubellino, "leading us to the production in the laboratory of the droplet of the densest and hottest matter ever observed by humans."

High temperature is not the only surprising property of the plasma. The discovery that quark-gluon plasma behaves like a  'strongly coupled perfect liquid' was a surprise finding from the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. "Now at the LHC we have seen 'quark-gluon-plasma mini-bubbles' in proton-lead and even in some proton-proton reactions, to everybody's great surprise," says Giubellino. "It turned out that the quark-gluon plasma is much more amazing than anyone would have dared to predict."

For Schukraft, the EPS prize is not primarily a reward for personal achievements, but rather recognition of the effort of a community more than 1000 strong working on heavy-ion physics at the LHC. "The LHC heavy-ion programme does very well indeed in terms of scientific returns, and certainly much more than could have reasonably been expected in terms of surprises and discoveries," he says.