The REU Site at CERN

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

The Northeastern University sponsors a NSF-REU program at Cern each summer. CERN is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics and it straddles the border between Switzerland and France just outside Geneva. It is the foremost facility of its kind in the world, and the REU Site at CERN is designed to give ten US science and engineering undergraduates the opportunity to participate in the annual CERN Summer Student Programme. The successful students are chosen after an exhaustive national search. They are chosen not only for their outstanding academic background and interest in physics, but also to provide as eclectic a group of students as possible to represent American diversity to the Europeans. At CERN the US students join a select group of international physics students and participate in a variety of educational and social activities. Although the US is not an official member state of CERN, the US students are treated exactly the same as member state students and they enjoy all the benefits of being an official CERN Summer Student. Activities include: attending lectures by experts in a variety of fields in physics, engineering and computing; working with and learning from world-renowned physicists; collaborating on multi-national research projects including CMS and ATLAS at the Large Hadron Collider. This unique opportunity not only allows the students to learn fundamental physics in a research environment, but it also gives them the benefit of working in an international setting.