On 14 February, the minister of finance of the Republic of Cyprus, Michalis Sarris, visited CERN, accompanied by a distinguished delegation, including Christos Schizas, the vice-rector of the University of Cyprus, Costas Kounnas of Ecole Normale and Panos Razis of the University of Cyprus. During the visit, Sarris and CERN’s director-general, Robert Aymar, signed a co-operation agreement.
The new agreement provides the framework for strengthening the scientific and technical co-operation between CERN and Cyprus, giving the opportunity for scientists from Cypriot institutes to participate in CERN’s scientific programme in experimental high-energy physics, theoretical physics, information technology and accelerator development. In addition, university students and professionals will be able to take part in training and educational programmes, as well as in jointly organized workshops and conferences.
Cyprus was already an active member of the L3 experiment at the Large Electron-
Positron collider, when it joined the CMS collaboration in 1995, preparing for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A memorandum of understanding was signed in 1999.
In work for CMS, the Cypriot high-energy physics group joined a consortium with responsibility for manufacturing the barrel yoke and the vacuum tank of the CMS solenoid. Construction of both systems is now complete. In addition, members of the Cypriot team have also developed specialized equipment for performing control and calibration tests of the “very front-end” electronic boards of the CMS calorimeter. The groups from Cyprus are also currently seeking an upgrade of their high-performance computer clusters for Monte Carlo simulation and analysis of LHC data, as a valuable component of the Grid initiative.
The co-operation agreement between CERN and Cyprus will soon be followed by the signing of the corresponding protocols, upgrading the scientific and technical links in the areas of experimental and theoretical particle physics, high-performance computing and applications, and other projects subject to prior formal agreement between Cyprus and CERN.
