ISOTDAQ 2023 is the 13th of a series of international schools dedicated to introducing those with an education in physics, engineering or computing (ranging from undergraduates to postdocs) to the "arts and crafts" of triggering and acquiring data for physics experiments. The main aim of the school is to provide an overview of the basic instruments and methodologies used in high energy physics, spanning from small experiments in the lab to the very large LHC experiments. 

The school will be split 50-50 between a series of lectures and hands-on laboratory exercises, in which students can use the concepts and techniques they have learned throughout the course.

The School will be held in Istanbul, Turkey, from 13 to 22 June 2023. Please apply by 1 March 2023.

For more information and registration, visit the Indico page of the event.

Building on the successful results of the bike-sharing pilot launched in 2022, the Mobility service is taking advantage of the traditional winter cessation of the bike and e-bike sharing service to implement a new service contract.

This change of provider aims to offer a service that best meets the needs of the whole CERN community. The bike and e-bike sharing service will resume on 6 March 2023.

Click here to find out more about mobility solutions at CERN.

On 15 and 16 February, IdeaSquare, the innovation space at CERN, will throw open its doors for you to explore how to make the most of our facilities. IdeaSquare is a rapid prototyping and multipurpose innovation space at CERN, freely accessible to members of the CERN community. During the two-day event, you will be able to visit the facility, interact with the team and those using the space, and hear presentations about all of our activities, from prototyping to education and entrepreneurship.

Bring an idea from your workplace that you want to prototype or learn about different prototyping challenges from the CERN community. Join one of our hands-on exercises to challenge your way of thinking, as we do in our educational programmes. Find out more about the upcoming opportunities for the EU-funded ATTRACT programme. Get help to organise your next event or hackathon, and learn more about the forthcoming Science Gateway offerings. Discover our innovation knowledge journal. Hear from CERN alumni who have gone on to become successful entrepreneurs sharing their lessons on how to bring your deep tech innovation into the market.

In addition, we’ll showcase R&D&I projects and prototypes made by some CERN colleagues and others addressing societal challenges. Projects created by multidisciplinary student teams collaborating with researchers at CERN will also be displayed. Finally, you can also join us for a special evening to watch the screening of Ghost Particle, a documentary film that features IdeaSquare.

The event will take place at IdeaSquare on 15 and 16 February from 9.00 a.m. both days. Building 3179 is located directly behind the Globe of Science and Innovation and you can access it through the Globe car park. The space is open to anyone with a CERN badge. The full agenda is available on the Indico page for the event and no registration is necessary.

Join us at our Open Doors event to discover how you can develop your prototype, contribute to training and inspiring the next generation, or how to use our space for your next event.

With the snow and the ice, pavements and road surfaces can resemble skating rinks, increasing the risk of slips and injuries. Winter sports are also a common source of accidents. At this time of year, the CERN infirmary sees more people coming in with musculoskeletal problems after a fall.

In 2021 in Switzerland, 195 000 people were injured after tripping, falling or slipping while walking or on the stairs (Suva, 2021). At CERN, in 2022, three people fell off their bicycles, resulting in one being signed off work for eight days, and one person fell while walking and was signed off for four days.

In addition, over 30 000 employees in Switzerland suffer winter sports injuries every year (Suva, 2021). According to a report published in 2021 by the French Observatoire d'accidentologie des sports d'hiver, more than 110 000 people experienced traumatic injuries in France in 2020.

In downhill skiing, sprained knees are the most common injury, accounting for almost a third of the total (32%), with shoulder injuries – mainly dislocated shoulders – accounting for 15%. Snowboarding most commonly results in wrist fractures (25%) or shoulder injuries (19%).

So how can you glide through the season smoothly and make the most of the winter sports opportunities?

Whether or not you’re a fan of snow sports, take care during your journeys and activities.

Whichever sport you choose, make sure that you’re prepared and have the right kit. Here are some basic tips for skiers and snowboarders in particular:

• Good physical preparation is key to reducing the risk of an accident. Strengthen your muscles and do cardiovascular workouts (see advice (in French) from the Swiss national accident insurance fund Suva on making the most of the season).
• Get your ski equipment checked every year; a lot of sprained knees are caused by badly adjusted fastenings or boots.
• Wearing a helmet reduces the risk of head injury by 35% in the event of an accident: get a helmet that meets the standards and is the right size for your head.
• Warm up / stretch before hitting the slopes.
• Wear wrist guards if you’re a snowboarder.
• Eat regularly and drink hot drinks to stay hydrated.
• Slow down.

Have a great winter!

For more information, check out the following links (in French):

Bien se protéger du froid (ameli.fr)

Top 3 des accidents de sports d’hiver et comment soulager une blessure (medisafe.fr)

Sports d’hiver | Pratiquer ski et snowboard sans accident (suva.ch)

Tout schuss sur les pistes : les blessures liées à la pratique du ski - Chirurgie orthopédique (chirurgie-orthopedique.fr)

Join representatives from Kompaflex to find out more about the company, potential job opportunities and the skills and talents they are now seeking.

The event will start at 11 a.m. on 3 February with a general presentation and will be followed by a Q&A session, come armed with your questions.

Please register here for the event to receive the zoom link.

About Kompaflex

With over 40 years of experience, Kompaflex is a recognised specialist in the advanced design and manufacturing of custom-made metallic expansion joints of all sizes, temperatures, pressures and materials.

CERN contributes to medical innovation through its cutting-edge technologies, competencies and know-how. In this talk, Benjamin Frisch will discuss the close link between medicine and physics and give an overview of CERN’s contributions to healthcare.

26 January - 6 p.m.

Registration on the Alumni website

The four EIROforum organisations - CERN, EMBL, ESA and ESO - join forces again in 2023 to bring you a shared webinar on data protection on Monday 30 January from 4 to 6 p.m.. 

More information on Indico.

Join the audience for a live webinar at 3 p.m. on 26 January 2023 exploring the ongoing axion search activities at DESY. 

The worldwide interest in axions and other weakly interacting slim particles (WISPs) as constituents of a dark sector of nature has strongly increased over the last years. A vibrant community is developing, constructing and operating corresponding experiments, so that most promising parameter regions will be probed within the next 15 years.

Many of these approaches rely on WISPs converting to photons. At DESY in Hamburg, larger-scale projects are pursued: the “light-shining-through-a-wall” experiment, ALPS II in the HERA tunnel, will start data taking soon. The solar helioscope BabyIAXO is nearly ready to start construction, while the dark matter haloscope MADMAX is in the prototyping phase.

This webinar will introduce the physics cases and focus on the axion search activities ongoing at DESY.

To find out more and to register, visit the CERN Courier's website. 

The ambitious Phase II upgrades of the ATLAS and CMS detectors, necessary to deal with the tenfold increase in data to be delivered by the High-Luminosity LHC, are pushing detector technologies to new heights. This issue also looks back on the discovery of the W and Z bosons and on the origins of the SESAME light source, showcases the latest applications of accelerator technology in radiotherapy and aviation, and reports on the latest results from LHCb concerning the flavour anomalies.

Join the audience for a live CERN Courier webinar at 4 p.m. Central European Time on 17 January 2023 to celebrate 60 years of SLAC. 

This year, SLAC celebrates its remarkable past while continuing its quest for a bright future. This presentation takes a look at how it all started with the lab’s two-mile-long linear accelerator and accompanying groundbreaking discoveries in particle physics; explores how the lab’s scientific mission has evolved over time to include many disciplines ranging from X-ray science to cosmology; and discusses the most exciting perspectives for future research, from developing new quantum technology to pushing the frontiers of our understanding of the universe on its largest scales.

To find out more and to register, visit the CERN Courier's website. 

Is bitcoin the future of money or a fad?

This talk ("Bitcoin: the new Amazon or Netscape of 1994?") will explain what bitcoin is, how it compares to other forms of money and cryptocurrencies and, for those who dare, how to invest in it.

19 January 2023 6 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Online - Register to receive Zoom details

About the speaker: Elias Noschis holds a Ph.D. in physics and an MBA. He has been working for the semiconductor, watchmaking, automotive and financial industry. He has been investing privately for almost a decade and is eager to share his insights. 

Find out more on the CERN Alumni website. 

Please note that the Globe car park will be inaccessible from 22 December 2022 to 4 January 2023 included. 

Users of the car park are therefore invited to remove their vehicles by the evening of 21 December. 

Thank you for your understanding. 

Registration is now open for the CERN Accelerator School’s course on "RF for Accelerators", 18 June – 1 July 2023, Berlin, Germany. This course is organised in collaboration with the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB).

This unique 2-week residential course will mainly be of interest to staff in accelerator laboratories, university departments or companies involved in producing RF equipment for accelerators. The course will include a review of the RF technology presently used in the field of particle accelerators as well as a recapitulation of the theoretical fundamentals.

Different RF equipment and RF technologies will be discussed along with their practical applications for various types of accelerators. Dedicated "hands-on" afternoon courses and seminars will complete the programme.

Due to the afternoon courses the maximum number of participants will be limited. The principle of "first come first served" will be applied.

For more information and to register, visit this Indico page: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1212689/

We invite students to take part in an EU-funded challenge to imagine new multidisciplinary solutions to address environmental issues by using particle accelerators. This challenge will be tackled by multidisciplinary teams invited to stay, all expenses covered (*), for 10 days at the European Scientific Institute (ESI) on the France-Geneva border.

Some particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN are the largest scientific tools on Earth. But beyond driving large scientific discoveries, many smaller accelerators are used in medicine to cure cancer and they also have many other applications in our daily lives.

For 10 days, students with different academic backgrounds will join teams of six to imagine innovative solutions on how can particle accelerators be used to tackle environmental challenges. On the 10th day, they will present their work to a jury of experts at CERN.

To help in this task, students will be offered high-level seminars on particle accelerators, on environmental challenges and on innovation as well as a stimulating environment to discuss these issues.

This initiative is put forward by the I.FAST project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It stems from the historic collaboration between the ESI, CERN and others partners to run the Joint Universities Accelerator School.

More details can be found at: http://www.ifast-cbi.particle-accelerators.eu

Who can apply?
Applications are welcome from all applicants. Preference will be given to students in the second cycle of university studies (typically between the 3rd and 5th year of university) and priority will be given to those studying in universities located in countries members of I.FAST (see list at: https://ifast-project.eu/participants).

Language:
All activities will be held in English.

How to apply?
To apply fill the form at: http://www.ifast-cbi.particle-accelerators.eu/application/

Application deadline:
The application form has to be submitted before Monday 28 February 23:59, Geneva time.

Calendar:
28 February 2023: Application deadline
1 May: Successful applicants are notified.
3 July: Online meeting, “Getting to know each other”.
5-22 July: Series of online seminar to learn about accelerators and their environmental applications.
25 July - 3 August: Stay at the European Scientific Institute in Archamps (including a visit at CERN).
3 August: Presentation at CERN and award ceremony.

* Travel expenses in economy class will be reimbursed within a limit of €300.

______

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement No 101004730.

The Tomalla prize is attributed every few years by the Tomalla Foundation for outstanding work in gravity research (see http://www.tomalla-foundation.ch/ for previous prize winners and other activities of the Tomalla Foundation).

The Italian physicist Alessandra Buonanno has been awarded the Tomalla Prize 2022 for her outstanding work
on gravitational wave physics, especially for the effective one-body approach to describe the gravitational waves emitted by binary black holes or neutron stars, but also for other important contributions relevant for the detection of gravitational waves.

Alessandra Buonanno studied physics in Pisa where she finished her PhD in 1996. After a brief period spent at the theory division of CERN, she held postdoctoral positions at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France and at the California Institute of Technology in the USA. She was a permanent researcher at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP) and Laboratoire Astroparticule et Cosmologie (APC) in Paris with CNRS before joining the University of Maryland as physics professor.

Since 2014 she is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, and holds a professorship position at the University of Maryland. Since 2017 she is also honorary professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University and at Potsdam University. She is member and principal investigator of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which discovered the first gravitational wave from two coalescing black holes in 2015.

In her theoretical work, Prof. Buonanno made seminal contributions to the modelling of gravitational
waves from the coalescence of compact-binary systems, most importantly two orbiting black holes, by combining analytical and numerical-relativity methods. A precise modelling of this signal is crucial to distinguish gravitational waves from the many contributions to the ‘noise’ in the detectors. In particular, Prof. Buonanno and her group contributed importantly to the generation of gravitational wave ‘templates’ which observers use to compare their signals with and interpret their astrophysical origin.

The Tomalla Prize ceremony 2022 will take place on December 16 at 17:30
in the Grand Auditoire de l’Ecole de Physique (24, Quai Ernest Ansermet, Genève)

The laureate will give a colloquium about her work.

The ceremony is open to the public.

Join the audience on 12 January at 4.30 p.m. for a CERN colloquium on "Twenty first century Nature” presented by Nature editor-in-chief Magdalena Skipper. 

Magdalena Skipper will discuss how Nature of today is different from its former self, showing how the journal embraced changes towards a more open and transparent science and worked to facilitate them while staying true to its core mission: facilitating the prompt communication of key scientific developments to the research communities and fostering a greater appreciation of this important work among the wider public.

The colloquium will take place in person in the main auditorium and online attendance is possible via webcast. Tea and coffee will be served in the main auditorium from 4 p.m.

For more information, visit the Indico event.

On the occasion of the Italian National Day of Space, ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli shares his career highlights and the lessons learned from the perspective of his more than 300 days in orbit on the Space Shuttle and Soyuz missions and a long-duration flight to the International Space Station. With the participation of CERN engineer Slawosz Uznanski, who has just been recruited in the 2022 class of the European Astronaut Corps.

Join the audience in CERN's main auditorium on 16 December at 11 a.m.. Organisation and Moderation: Paola Catapano, IR-ECO-ECP, with the support of the Italian Embassy in Bern, of the Italian General Consulates in Geneva and Zurich, and with the collaboration of the CERN Library.

Paolo Nespoli 
Major Paolo Angelo Nespoli  is an Italian astronaut and engineer at the European Space Agency (ESA). In 2007, he first traveled into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a mission specialist of STS-120. In December 2010 he again traveled into space aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft as an Expedition 26/27 flight engineer. Nespoli's third spaceflight was on board Soyuz MS-05, which launched in July 2017 for Expedition 52/53. He has spent more than 300 days on the International space Station. He was also ESA’s oldest active astronaut prior to his retirement in 2019.

Slawosz Uznanski
CERN staff member Slawosz Uznanski, reliability engineer of the LHC new power converters in the Accelerator Systems department (SY), was selected in November to be in the reserve pool of the new class of ESA astronauts. Slawosz, who has held a passion for space and exploration since his early childhood, has successfully passed all the stages of a year-long extremely competitive selection process, which started in summer 2021 with more than 22 500 applicants from ESA Member and Associate Member States. This was the first call for new ESA astronaut applicants since 2008.

The Bulletin of 31 October 2022 featured a reminder concerning the ban on laser pointers on Swiss soil in 2019, as per articles 22 and 23 of the Ordinance to the Swiss Federal Act on Protection against the Risks associated with Non-Ionising Radiation and with Sound (O-NIRSA). This concerns a ban on all laser pointers belonging to classes 1M, 2, 2M, 3R, 3B and 4.

The term “laser pointer” refers to a laser device that, on account of its size and weight, can be held in and guided by hand and that emits laser radiation for the purpose of pointing out objects and locations. These are most commonly used at CERN for giving presentations.

Swiss law is now more restrictive than French law, which authorises class 1, 1M, 2 and 2M laser pointers (décret n° 2012-1303 du 26 novembre 2012 – in French). The tightening of Swiss law follows various incidents in Switzerland involving the use of these lasers.

Following a recent incident in Switzerland involving people in possession of such devices, CERN has decided to ban their use on the whole site, including the French part. Class 1 pointers are still allowed for use in presentations. The ban will be included in the new rule on laser safety that is currently being drafted.

Laser pointers can be disposed of via the appropriate CERN waste pathways, as electronic waste, once the batteries powering them have been removed.

Should you be in possession of a laser pointer of class 1M or above, you can return it for appropriate handling and disposal by placing it in one of the dedicated blue containers for electronics provided by the SCE Storage, Recuperation and Sales service, or hand it in directly at Building 133. 

Thank you for your cooperation.

Roadworks are scheduled by the SCE department at Gate E and on Route Siegbahn from Thursday 8 December 2022. Vehicles will enter the site on the left-hand lanes and alternating traffic will be put in place on Route Siegbahn.

Traffic disruptions are to be expected, we thank you in advance for your understanding.