CERN openlab is pleased to announce that its latest annual report has been published today.

The reports cover work carried out through 25 R&D projects — undertaken in collaboration with 11 different technology companies and 7 different research organisations — in 2019.

Projects cover topics such as data-centre technologies and infrastructures, computing performance and software, machine learning and data analytics, and quantum technologies.

There are also five projects that are being carried out in collaboration with communities beyond particle physics, with a view to sharing technologies and expertise with fields that face similar ICT challenges. Four of these are being carried out in the context of CERN's strategy for knowledge transfer to medical applications, which is led by CERN's Knowledge Transfer group.

The 25 projects carried out in 2019 is a new record for CERN openlab, up from 17 in 2018.

“I am pleased to see the investigations that CERN openlab has begun — in collaboration with leading industries — into state-of-the-art technologies like machine learning, neuromorphic computing, and quantum computing,” writes Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General, in the report. "It is crucial to explore the potential of emerging new modes of computing such as these, so as to make the right decisions about the computing models we will employ as our field and related ICT challenges evolve over this new decade.”

“CERN openlab, with its deep connections to many of the ICT companies at the forefront of these developments, is ideally placed to help ensure the CERN research community derives maximum benefit from these innovations,” writes Alberto Di Meglio, head of CERN openlab, in the report. “Equally, CERN openlab can play an important role in helping to share the knowledge experts at CERN have developed in these areas with those from other research communities.”

Read the report in full here: http://cern.ch/go/vWL9.

Author: Andrew Purcell