Slovenia is ready for full CERN membership – and so is Cosylab!
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia (CCIS) is the national focal point for CERN and also the facilitator of Slovenian company cooperation with CERN. At the Chamber, the group met with high-tech industry representatives, including those from AVA partner Cosylab, the world specialist in control systems and integration for particle accelerators.
Interestingly, Slovenian researchers’ participation in CERN dates back to the 70s, during the time of the Yugoslav state, which was also one of the founders of CERN. Now, finally, Slovenia is in the process of upgrading its status as an associate member of CERN,the intergovernmental organisation that operates the world’s largest and highest-energy particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
A working group from CERN visited the Slovenian government and research institutions to see whether Slovenia is ready for full membership.
Twenty Slovenian firms, with Cosylab among them, have already worked or procured for CERN, and interest is rising: the year 2023 was the most successful so far, with almost four–fifths of all Slovenia‘s CERN membership fee — approximately 1.7 million Swiss francs – returning to Slovenia in the form of contracts with Slovenian companies.
Charlotte Lindberg Warakaulle, Director of international relations at CERN, emphasised the importance of cooperation between industry, science and CERN, which can be a complex balancing act for new full-member states.
Rok Šabjan, Deputy COO of Cosylab, added, “Traditionally, in our country, the scientific and research part of participation with CERN was always strong. On the other hand, many commercial organisations did not recognise the advantages of collaborating with CERN. This is now changing for the better! As a global Big Science services and solutions provider for more than two decades, Cosylab recognised the business opportunities at CERN early on. For us, the main challenge now is increasing the share of Slovenian high value-added, complex services to CERN.“
This article is based on an original article on the Cosylab website ad can be found here