CERN and Malta join forces
On 10 January, the prime minister of Malta, Lawrence Gonzi, visited CERN to sign a co-operation agreement between the organization and the government of Malta. The agreement is the starting point of a negotiation process that will ultimately lead to a collaboration in which Maltese scientists and engineers will contribute to CERN's scientific and technical programmes.
In anticipation of the agreement, the University of Malta has already collaborated in the development of the LHC in the form of the field description for the collider. This system is an integral building block of the feed-forward system of the machine and is based on magnetic measurements of the LHC superconducting magnets in cryogenic conditions. In addition, several students from the university recently participated in CERN's summer student programme.
Accompanied by government officials and delegates from the University of Malta, Gonzi acknowledged that the collaboration with CERN would be an excellent demonstration of the quality of Maltese personnel in hi-tech engineering and IT-based technologies. It would also provide plenty of excellent training opportunities for Maltese students.
In addition to meeting with CERN's director-general, Robert Aymar, the Maltese delegation toured the CMS experiment accompanied by spokesperson Tejinder Virdee, and also visited the Superconducting Magnet Test Facility with Nicholas Sammut, Malta's representative at CERN.