Nobel laureate Gerard't Hooft giving a speech on the future of physics

Less than a week after the good news of the EPP2010 report, recommending full American support for LHC experiments and the ILC, the Europeans sat down together to discuss their view of the future of particle physics. The almost 40 members of the CERN Council Strategy Group, the equivalent to the EPP2010 Committee, will write a draft strategy document for discussion and unanimous approval at a special meeting of the CERN Council in Lisbon in July. The outcome of the meeting in Zeuthen will not be made public until the CERN Council has convened in July.

In contrast to the US, there is no central body for funding or policy in Europe – there are universities, national labs, governments of the different countries, the European Commission and CERN. Therefore the only more or less central forum for discussions on particle physics is the CERN Council – any recommendation the Council makes can have a major impact on the national science programmes throughout Europe.

When CERN was founded in 1954, its governing body, the Council, was charged with the vision of promoting coordination and activity in fundamental physics research in Europe. With the growing globalisation of particle physics, witnessed by the 85 nationalities represented at Large Hadron Collider project (LHC) currently under construction at CERN, the Council decided to take a further step towards realising the vision in CERN’s founding convention.

Albrecht Wagner

The Strategy Group is a colourful mix of nominees from the CERN Member states, leading scientists, and representatives from the major labs, including of course CERN. In addition, senior representatives from the CERN Observer states, and from Astroparticle Physics European Coordination (ApPEC), Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee (NuPECC) and Funding Agencies for a Linear Collider (FALC), were present. The Strategy Group is co-chaired by Ken Peach (Chair of the CERN Scientific Policy Committee) and Torsten Åkesson (Chair of the European Committee for Future Accelerators). Its first major event, the Open Symposium in Orsay in February, had a major impact on the European particle physics community with almost 500 scientists participating and giving their input. The Zeuthen workshop only had one open day; for the rest of the week the Strategy Group distilled the input into the document for the Lisbon meeting.

About 100 scientists attended the open day held in DESY’s second site Zeuthen near Berlin, listening to presentations from the labs and regions and talks by Nobel prize laureate Gerard ‘t Hooft, Enrique Fernandez and Ugo Amaldi. The workshop was the second in the series of three events and will conclude at the CERN Council meeting in Lisbon in July.

Commenting on the workshop, Ken Peach said: "This was a very exciting process, and the Strategy Group was able, through some very hard work, to achieve the goals that we were set." "We very much appreciated the tranquil atmosphere and excellent working environment at Zeuthen, which contributed enormously to the success of the workshop," added Torsten Åkesson.

CERN Council Strategy Group

-- Barbara Warmbein