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Delegation from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), led by its Director General, prof. Rolf-Dieter Heuer, will visit Lithuania on September 26th. Prof. Heuer, Minister of Education prof. Dainius Pavalkis and the President of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences prof. Valdemaras Razumas will sign a renewed Protocol of the Cooperation Agreement of November 9th 2004 between the Government of Lithuania and CERN on the participation of Lithuania’s institutions in CERN Science programme.

“There is no doubt that the visit of the CERN delegation to Lithuania and the renewal of the Cooperation Agreement Protocol will intensify Lithuania-CERN cooperation and contribute to achieving our long-term goal – becoming CERN member state”, said Ambassador Rytis Paulauskas.

Using world’s biggest, most powerful and professional tools, scientists at CERN are experimenting to answer fundamental and complex questions of physics, such as what is the “dark matter”, what material the universe was made of during the Big Bang, why gravitation exists. Although CERN specialises in the elementary particles physics, it also successfully works in related areas, which are essential to global science and technology progress. It is notable that it is exactly the scientists at CERN who invented internet. Lithuanian scientists have been closely cooperating with CERN since 1993, when the scientists from Semiconductor Physics Institute were invited to contribute to experiments led by CERN. Technologists from the Institute of Physical Electronics of Kaunas University of Technology have also cooperated with CERN. Since 2001, thanks to prof. J. V. Vaitkus, Vilnius University and several Lithuanian enterprises were invited to cooperate in several CERN programmes.

Today Lithuania participates in main CERN programmes and projects: Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Compact Muon Selenoid (CMS), Worldwide LHC Computing Grid. Every year over 10 Lithuanian scientists and around the same number of students are participants in those projects. Lithuania expects to become CERN member state and invests in education strengthening country’s scientific experiments sector so that it would meet the national needs as well as international standards.

CERN is the biggest particle physics laboratory in the world located in the north of Geneva, on Swiss-French border. Convention establishing CERN was signed on September 29th 1954 between 12 states. This year CERN marks its 60th anniversary.
Today CERN member states are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Israel – the only non-European state. CERN has around 2,500 permanent employees and 12,300 visiting scientists representing 608 universities and scientific institutes from 113 states. The main aim of CERN is to provide particle accelerators and other tools for particle physics experiments.