Education and training

CERN openlab is a structure designed to create knowledge through research, development, and evaluation of technologies. This knowledge is disseminated through a wide range of channels, from the publication of reports and articles, to the organisation of workshops and seminars at CERN. These events often feature lectures given by representatives of our collaborating companies, as well as hand-on practice with the latest ICT solutions.

Find the latest workshops and seminars in our events calendar.

Seminars

We organise seminars on the hottest ICT topics. By capitalising on our extensive network of connections from research and industry, we are able to secure speakers working at the coalface of innovation.

Training courses

As well as testing groundbreaking ICT technologies, we need to build up expertise in using them too. That’s why we support a number of hands-on training courses — often featuring invited coaches from industry — for both members of CERN and the wider research community.

Community challenges

We’ve organised a number of competitions and campaigns with our partners. For example, we recently collaborated with Intel on the ‘Modern Code Developer Challenge’, which saw the winning students invited to CERN. We’re planning similar activities — for students and others — in the near future.

Workshops

CERN openlab is a collaborative endeavour. We want to share our vision about the future of scientific computing, but we also want to benefit from new perspectives — both from those working in industry and in research. That’s why we host a range of workshops to discuss the latest ICT trends.

Online lectures

We want to open CERN openlab’s activities to the world! Almost all of our lectures — especially those from our popular summer-student programme — are broadcast live over the web for you to follow wherever you are in the world.

CERN openlab summer-student programme

Each summer, CERN openlab runs a nine-week programme for bachelor’s and master’s students specialising in subjects related to computer science. These students work on cutting-edge projects with our collaborators, gaining hands-on experience with the latest ICT solutions.

CERN is the birthplace of the World Wide Web. The laboratory hosts ground-breaking experiments and is at the heart of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). It is an environment like no other, where dizzying ICT challenges abound!

By joining the CERN openlab summer-student programme, you will work with some of the latest hardware and software technologies and see how advanced ICT solutions are used in high-energy physics. The students will also participate in a series of lectures prepared for them by computing experts at CERN, in addition to the main lecture series for CERN summer students. Visits to the accelerators and experimental areas are also included in the programme.

Applications for the 2022 CERN openlab Summer Student Programme are now open: http://cern.ch/go/WM8G.

 

Join the summer-student programme and work hands on with
machine learning big-data analytics Internet of things code modernisation neural networks alternative computing architectures open-science platforms

 

The CERN openlab summer-student programme is much more than just a summer spent learning with CERN.

It can lead to follow-on projects in your home institute.

It may even inspire you to become an entrepreneur in cutting-edge computing technologies!

Are you a B.Sc. or M.Sc. student (who will have completed at least three years of full-time studies at university level by next spring) in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or physics — with a strong computing profile? Would you be interested in working on an advanced ICT project for nine weeks during the period
June-August 2022? If so, you should apply to the CERN openlab summer-student programme!

The application must be submitted here by 31 January 2022. The following documents should be included in the application: your CV, recommendation letter(s) by university supervisor(s), a motivation letter with an indication of the preferred area of work, and academic transcripts for the current year. Please note that incomplete applications will not be considered. Replies to applicants will be sent out in April/May 2022.

For the normal on-site programme, a stipend is provided to cover the students' living costs while staying at CERN.

NOTE: The Organization reserves the right to hold the 2022 edition in an online format, should the situation around the Covid-19 require so.

The students participating in the programme work on projects related to specific topics, each with a dedicated CERN supervisor. At the end of their 9-weeks working with CERN, the students produce a report and present their work in a short public presentation. Reports on previous summer-student projects can be found here.