The two winning teams of BL4S edition 2016 finalized scientific papers about their conducted experiments. In September 2016 the teams “Pyramid Hunters” from Poland and “Relatively Special” from the UK have been invited to CERN to use a fully equipped beam line to run their experiments together with two support scientists.

Team Pyramid Hunters measured the muon absorption of limestone to help understand data from a muon tomography of the Chephren pyramid. Team Relatively Special tested the validity of the Lorentz factor with two methods, by measuring the time of flight of different particles of different momenta and the effect of time dilation due to Special Relativity on the decay rate of pions.

Read their papers here:
Pyramid Hunters: The secret chambers in the Chephren Pyramid
Relatively Special: Testing the validity of the Lorentz factor

This article was originally published on the Beamline for Schools website. 

Following the success from last years, the project “Innovation for Change” kicked off today at TAG Fondazione Agnelli in Turin. The project is promoted by IdeaSquare, CERN’s dedicated facility for experimental innovation, Collège des Ingénieurs Italia (CDI) and Politecnico di Torino.

The project involves 50 young talents – 30 MBA fellows from CDI and 20 PhD from Politecnico di Torino, with scientific & engineering backgrounds, who will be working together for the next five months in Geneva and Turin, split into several groups, but with a common goal: to apply the most advanced technologies in facing global social challenges related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Eight new startup projects will originate from this intensive work over the next months, to compete in the market with an innovative product or service matching global societal challenges and filling the needs of industrial groups or global organizations.

The teams will be supported by the partner companies, organizations and mentors who are entrepreneurs or work in big industrial groups. They will work along with the scientists of CERN and professors of Politecnico di Torino, who will help find advanced tech tools and solutions to create prototypes for these startup projects that are ready for market entry and development. 

Big industrial companies and global organizations are also collaborating with the teams by selecting relevant social challenges guiding them through a joint effort to find viable innovative solutions. UniCredit, Comune di Torino, Enel, Fondazione Agnelli and Gellify are the challenges owners of 2018 edition.

At the end of the project, scheduled for the end of June 2018, the teams will share the outcome of their work with a group of companies, entrepreneurs and investors, in a public pitch and expo, attended also by the heads of the founding institutions.

The ATLAS Collaboration has over 5500 members in 182 institutions around the globe. But, did you know that over 1000 of these members are PhD students? ATLAS PhD students contribute strongly and critically to all areas of the experiment, while learning valuable skills for their degrees. 

Since 2010, the best of the best have been celebrated at the annual ATLAS Thesis Awards, which highlight outstanding contributions to the collaboration in the context of a PhD thesis. The theses considered by the jury could cover any area of ATLAS physics, from detector development, over operations, software and performance studies to physics analysis. Indeed, all awarded theses cover at least two of these areas to considerable depth.

On 22 February 2018, at a celebration in CERN’s Main Auditorium, five new winners were announced: Pierfrancesco Butti (Nikhef), Johanna Gramling (Université de Genève), Oleh Kivernyk (Université Paris-Saclay), Philip Sommer (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) and Markus Zinser (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz).

A total of 31 nominations were received this year, all of very high-quality and encompassing a wide variety of ATLAS activities and results. “Selecting the winners was not an easy task,” said Paul Jackson, Chair of the 2017 ATLAS Thesis Awards Committee. “This year’s applications featured some incredible pieces of work – not just the theses themselves, but the high-quality recommendation letters that went with them. Going through each nomination was a pleasure for committee members.”

During the awards ceremony, the winners gave presentations about their thesis work in front of members of the ATLAS collaboration, including ATLAS Spokesperson Karl Jakobs. He shook hands with each student and – together with ATLAS Collaboration Board Chair, Max Klein, and Deputy Chair, Katsuo Tokushuku – presented them with certificates and an engraved glass model of the ATLAS detector.

At the conclusion of the event, ATLAS collaboration members were encouraged to consider the upcoming 2018 awards. “We hope to receive even more nominations from our members across the globe,” said Max Klein, “thus ensuring the continued excellence of the Awards in the years to come.”

Read the winning theses:

• Pierfrancesco Butti (Nikhef, Netherlands) - Search for scalar top quarks decaying into scalar tau leptons with ATLAS at √s = 8 TeV and Alignment of the ATLAS Inner Detector in Run-2
• Johanna Gramling (Université de Genève, Switzerland) - Search for Dark Matter in Missing-Energy Final States with an Energetic Jet or Top Quarks with the ATLAS Detector
• Oleh Kivernyk (CEA/Irfu/SPP, Université Paris-Saclay, France) - Measurement of the W-boson mass with the ATLAS detector
• Philip Sommer (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany) - A Measurement of W Boson Pair Production in pp Collisions at √s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS Experiment​
• Markus Zinser (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany) - Search for new heavy charged bosons and measurement of high-mass Drell-Yan production in proton-proton collisions​

CERN has a history of building bridges between scientists, nations and different disciplines to bring concrete benefits to society. Recognising entrepreneurship as an important ingredient for economic growth, the CERN & Society Foundation has launched the CERN Entrepreneurship Student Programme (CESP) today.

The first programme of its kind at CERN, CESP aims to cultivate a culture of entrepreneurship and nurture a younger generation of high-tech entrepreneurs. The programme targets entrepreneurship students at the Master’s level and utilises CERN’s scientific expertise to provide a technological dimension to the students’ training and education.

In the summer of 2018, ten Master’s students from across the globe will be invited for a five-week residency at CERN. They will receive coaching and training on technology-driven venture creation and will work alongside experienced professionals from CERN’s Knowledge Transfer group.

“CESP gives us a unique opportunity to introduce CERN technologies and know-how to the next generation of high-tech entrepreneurs,” explains Giovanni Anelli, CERN’s Knowledge Transfer Group Leader. “It combines two ingredients that are important to CERN, training and entrepreneurship, and is a way for us to maximise the impact of CERN’s knowledge on society, while contributing to economic growth.”

The students will be guided by the motto “Explore – Evaluate – Exploit” during their residency and will be encouraged to put theory into practice, with the final goal to develop concepts for new ventures.

CESP is an Education & Outreach project within the CERN & Society Foundation, established to enhance CERN’s beneficial footprint on society. In 2018, CESP is made possible thanks to the generous support from Strangeworks, a US-based Quantum Computing Company founded by entrepreneur William Hurley, who is widely known as “whurley”.

“We are thrilled to join forces with Strangeworks to make the CERN Entrepreneurship Student Programme a reality in 2018,” says Matteo Castoldi, Head of CERN’s Partnerships & Fundraising. “Whurley is a great advocate of open knowledge and science, one of the main principles CERN is based upon, and is such an established entrepreneur himself. We share the vision to create the next generation of entrepreneurs with the CERN Entrepreneurship Student Programme. We are grateful for his trust and support!”

“Strangeworks is incredibly excited to be the inaugural sponsor of the CERN Entrepreneurship Student Programme,” affirms William Hurley. “As part of our commitment to building bridges in the physics, mathematics and computer science communities we see entrepreneurship playing a key role in creating the foundation and empowering these students to apply world-changing scientific advances to practical entrepreneurial successes.”

Don’t miss this unique opportunity! Applications will open on Thursday, 15 March. The deadline for submissions is 30 April 2018. CESP runs from 6 August to 7 September 2018.

Back in 2015, CERN’s Diversity Office launched an initiative targeting high-school science teachers: a 20-hour group session on the topic of gender inclusive teaching was introduced into CERN’s yearly International Teacher Programme. Its aim? To raise awareness within the teaching community and help build competencies to spark the interest of both female and male students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

“One of the things I will take home is that an environment of collaboration and open discussion, rather than competition, can do wonders and can engage not only more girls, but also my more introverted male students.” - I. Molefi, Physics Teacher and participant in the 2015 International Teacher programme

The Diversity Office is now rolling out a 45-minute interactive module in CERN’s National Teacher Programmes, reaching out to more of the teachers visiting CERN.

In this framework, the Diversity Office organised a “Gender Equality in Education” workshop on 5 June, inviting scholars and field experts. Among the invited speakers were Francesca Borgonovi, Senior Analyst at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); Beth Bramley, Gender Balance Manager at the Institute of Physics (IOP); and Isabelle Collet, Associate Researcher in the Institute of Gender studies at the University of Geneva (UNIGE). On behalf of CERN, Teacher Programmes manager Jeff Wiener and Diversity analyst Ioanna Koutava also presented the Organization’s activities.

Borgonovi presented highlights from the 2015 OECD report “The ABC of Gender Equality in Education”, which looked at data on more than half a million students from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) worldwide study. The report explored the differences in performance and behaviour between female and male students. Trends showed the differences in attitudes and self-belief, as well as the expectations of students and their parents of future careers in STEM.

Bramley showcased initiatives launched by the IOP to improve gender balance in education in the United Kingdom, as well as research findings around stereotypes and educational practices. In particular, the 2017 report on improving gender balance showed that a three-pronged approach produced positive effects: improving girls’ resilience, developing inclusive techniques in physics lessons and training the entire school staff on unconscious biases. For more information on the IOP’s reports, resources and current projects, visit the IOP gender balance webpage.

Collet provided practical advice for teachers on gender inclusive teaching. Her examples included the difference in student behaviour when the same task was described as a “geometric test” or a “drawing game” with boys preferring the former description and girls the latter (there are a large number of papers exploring this topic, including this one). Her tips on how to make the classroom more inclusive included giving all students the opportunity to speak and encouraging cooperative rather than competitive work. For more information, see the list of Collet’s publications.

Find out more about CERN’s teacher programmes here.

Thanks to five successful editions, the Beamline for Schools (BL4S) competition that offers high-school students the chance to conduct a real experiment at a real research laboratory has become a very popular science competition that has so far motivated almost 10,000 students to learn about particle physics. In 2019, the accelerators at CERN are going into a scheduled maintenance and upgrade break of two years. In order to continue BL4S, CERN is collaborating with DESY in Hamburg, Germany. DESY is a world-leading accelerator centre and Germany's national laboratory for particle physics, accelerators and photon science. It offers particle beams and infrastructure that allow for a very wide range of experiments in particle physics, detector development, and multidisciplinary science. Find out more about DESY's beam line and facilities at http://cern.ch/bl4s.

The Beamline for Schools competition remains open to teams of at least five high-school students aged 16 and up with at least one adult supervisor, or “coach”. Think of a simple, creative experiment and submit your written proposal and short video by 31 March 2019. Previous winners have investigated the structure of the pyramids, looked for particles that no-one has seen before, or have developed their own particle detector. What would you do? 

• July 2018 – Registration Opening: 
Register your team name, country, and coach’s contact details to start receiving email updates. 

• 31 March 2019 – Submission Deadline
: Submit your 1000-word proposal and 1-minute video (both in English only) by midnight CET. 

• June 2019 – Winners Announcement
: CERN and DESY announce the winners, who will be invited to DESY, as well as 20 to 30 short-listed teams. 

• September/October 2019 – Winners conduct their experiment at DESY: Exact dates will be defined by DESY's accelerator schedule. 


Prizes: All participants receive a certificate. Short-listed teams win a BL4S T-shirt for each team member, a cosmic-ray detector (CosmicPi) for the school, and – for some – the chance to visit a nearby physics laboratory. For the winning teams, nine members and up to two adult coaches per team will be invited, all expenses paid, to DESY for 10-12 days to carry out the experiments. 


Register now at http://cern.ch/bl4s! 


Any other questions? 
For many countries, experienced scientists have offered to help the teams in their native language (see here: https://cern.ch/bl4s/contact). 
In case your country or language is not listed or if you have general comments, suggestions, or organisational questions, please contact us directly at bl4s.team@cern.ch. 


CERN openlab summer students recently presented their cutting-edge ICT projects in a series of five-minute ‘lightning talk’ presentations. This year, 41 students from 22 different countries, were selected from more than 1800 applicants, a new record for the CERN openlab summer-student programme.

Students spent nine weeks at CERN working hands-on with some of the latest ICT systems. Projects addressed topics such as machine learning, code modernisation, data analytics, and much more. They presented their projects on 14 and 16 August and a panel of judges selected the best‘lightning talk’ presentations from each of these sessions.

“The CERN openlab summer-student programme offers a combination of experiences you cannot find anywhere else,” says Nathan Lacroix of ETH Zurich, who was selected as the overall winner of this year’s ‘lightning talks’. “I met 40 funny and talented students from all over the world, made contacts with major ICT companies, and worked on a fascinating and challenging project. It was an intense summer!’”

As in previous years, experts from CERN gave lectures to the students on a range of topics related to physics and computing, including computer security, how to write better code, the history of computing at CERN, and the vital role played by various ICT systems in discovering the Higgs boson. All lectures were webcast live and are now available here.

As well as visits within CERN and in Zurich, a highlight of the summer was the CERN Summer Student Webfest. This weekend hackathon, supported by CERN openlab, featured topics such as data visualisation, robotics, education and networking.

“CERN openlab works to promote and create innovation; it also plays an important role in CERN’s educational mission, particularly through this IT-focused summer-student programme’, says Alberto Di Meglio, head of CERN openlab. ‘The various events held over the last two months combine the best of both worlds, providing exciting opportunities for young, talented students to share ideas, work together, and generate the spark of innovation.”

Students wishing to participate in the 2019 CERN openlab summer-student programme should check the CERN openlab website again when applications open in December. In the meantime, more information about the programme can be found here.

A longer version of this article can be found on the CERN openlab website.

Imagine a university course without the typical classroom and a lecturer speaking in front of a group of students. A course in a collaborative space where teachers and students exchange ideas and work together to create innovative solutions to current global issues. That is what Challenge-Based Innovation (CBI) looks like.

Introduced as a pilot course at IDEAsquare in 2013, CBI progressed into becoming a masters-level student programme, aiming to implement CERN-developed technologies to address societal problems. Each year, the CBI course hosts students from universities worldwide here at CERN. Inspired by its success and to extend its impact locally, the Tampere University of Technology in Finland is the first institution to clone this course into its Masters programmes, involving all of its five faculties.

Last spring semester, when Laura Valtonen learned about the Challenge-Based Innovation pilot course at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), she was intrigued by how it differed from other academic programmes. Studying industrial engineering and management, she signed-up. The CBI@TUT started with a multidisciplinary team with  students from physics, chemistry, bioengineering and IT backgrounds, seven weeks of intense work culminated with the development of a real-world application project. Under the mentorship of five teachers, the team created a memory-foam filter prototype, worn in the nose to protect from air pollution.

“Suddenly we weren’t just a classroom full of students listening to the teacher, we were a team working on a society-oriented project and exchanging not only ideas, but also teaching methods,” says Laura. “The multidisciplinary approach also taught me how to think outside of the engineering thought box.”

Professor Saku Makinen from TUT told us about how, with an enthusiastic team of people, they managed this first pilot CBI course, building the bridges between IDEAsquare and the university’s rectorate. “We visited CERN and IDEAsquare to get guidelines to develop a local version of CBI as it was clear that copying courses would not work. CBI implementations need to have a local flavour to suit the curriculum of the students, faculties’ priorities, and other needs in order to have a real impact”, says Saku. Vice President Jarmo Takala continues that “TUT is actively allocating funding for renewing teaching methods and learning environments, and CBI is an excellent example of this. We look forward to scaling up the CBI approach and working with multinational student teams to increase European collaboration in education.”

Implementing the CBI@TUT pilot came with several challenges such as curricular timetable and content decisions, but communicating openly with the students helped overcome them. The connection with CERN and the possibility to take advantage of its resources allowed for hands-on experimentation and prototyping, which are essential in a CBI course model.

This successful piloting of the CBI course model will be taken further in the coming semester and hopefully inspire other universities to adopt it. For this, Saku and his team are developing a guidebook for future local CBI implementations that promises to help foresee any complications and encourage both educators and students to engage.

The first summer school organised between University of Barcelona and CERN for secondary students of the Barcelona region took place this year from 2 to 6 July. This event synchronised with the Barcelona Techno Week, a series of meeting point events for top experts in semiconductor radiation detectors and its readout electronics. Fourteen students were selected to take part and benefit from the programme, which included hands-on laboratory work, S’Cool LAB workshops and talks by physicists and engineers in the field of radiation detection and particle physics.

These days we are drowning in data. However, making public the huge amounts being produced every second by governmental institutions, scientific experiments and other endeavours, can provide interesting resources for educators from all over the globe. The experiments at CERN are prime examples of this, and for some years, CERN has pioneered Open Data in High-Energy Physics. The cutting-edge particle physics research data is publicly available and just a few clicks away from any teacher, student or curious aficionado.

With computers and increasingly intricate algorithms needed to probe deeper into nature's secrets, programming skills are more important than ever. So the CMS experiment has gone a step further.  In addition to sharing the original data from the experiment, the collaboration has also created simplified sets and tools that can be used in schools. Everything is available for free on github and requires no previous expertise.

The main material bank can be found in the English folder, but it's constantly expanding as the project continues. Some other ready-to-use exercises also exist in Spanish, German, Finnish and Greek. CMS uses Jupyter notebooks (interactive website-like programming environment tools), try one out.

These materials have been tested and developed with many science teachers and enthusiastic students. The results and reactions have been almost universally positive, with many saying how easy the materials are to use. Students have enjoyed learning about scientific methodology as well as the subjects themselves, such as particle physics or statistics.

”It's exciting to use actual coding with real data from scientific experiments. I wish there was more of it in school.” – High-school student, who had a taste of Open Data in their classroom.

Find out more about CMS’s resources https://github.com/cms-opendata-education and about the Open Data project in general: http://opendata.web.cern.ch