Geneva

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) is a scientific institution with the status of an international organisation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. CERN was founded in 1954, and today the organisation has 25 Member States. In addition, many countries participate in CERN’s work under different cooperation agreements. CERN’s main activities are research in high-energy physics and the development of the technology required for this, including information technology. CERN also provides training for schoolteachers, students and researchers.

CERN is home to the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments — accelerators and detectors — including the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful accelerator. Its main purpose is to detect previously unknown particles produced in collisions between charged particles — protons and heavy ions — accelerated to extremely high energies. Data collected during experiments on elementary particles and the relationships between them are studied at various research centres around the world. Although CERN is known for its experiments and theoretical research, an important part of its work is applied research aimed at creating new technologies and materials needed to build such equipment. As a result, several solutions now widely used today have originated at CERN, such as touchscreens and the World Wide Web (WWW), which enables to share content over the internet.