CERN openlab held its annual technical workshop on 11 and 12 January 2018. The event saw representatives of the CERN openlab collaborating companies and organisations gather in the CERN Council Chamber; it featured presentations and posters highlighting the progress made by the CERN openlab projects active over the last year.

With 2018 marking the start of CERN openlab’s sixth three-year phase, the second day of the workshop was dedicated to discussing future ICT challenges. These were grouped into three topics: (i) data-centre technologies and infrastructure, (ii) computing performance and software, and (iii) machine learning and data analytics. These topics were first set out in the white paper CERN openlab published on ‘Future ICT Challenges in Scientific Research’ in September 2017. The ICT challenges identified within these topics underpin progress in several fields of scientific research and will help shape CERN openlab’s future work.

“Our annual technical workshop is always a great opportunity for bringing together all of the people working on CERN openlab projects — including our collaborators from industry — with representatives of the LHC experiments, says Maria Girone,” CERN openlab CTO. “We’re looking forward to an exciting year of collaboration ahead of us, working together to conduct joint R&D and tackling the cutting-edge ICT challenges posed by the LHC’s ambitious upgrade programme.”

If you missed the workshop and would like to find out more, please visit the event’s Indico page. Here you can find slides of the presentations given at the event, participant details, and more. The CERN openlab annual report, with an overview of all progress made in the 16 projects active in 2017, will be made available on our website in the coming months.