By supporting this special campaign, you help carry innovations building on CERN’s legacy into classrooms, hospitals, and communities. Together, we can make science matter where it’s needed most. 

Barbara Solich, CERN & Society Foundation Head

Technology never stands still – and neither does innovation.

At the CERN & Society Foundation, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange is one of our core pillars. It drives our mission to ensure that CERN’s breakthroughs reach and benefit communities around the world.

MakeItMatter is a campaign to highlight four projects supported through the Foundation that are pushing the boundaries of innovation and bringing tangible impact to society.

They are:

Zenodo: an open-access digital repository enabling long-term preservation of research data, papers, and software.

CERN-Medicis: a CERN facility producing medical isotopes for cancer diagnosis and therapy. 

Biology Dynamics Modeller (BioDynaMo): an open-source, high-performance tool for simulating large-scale biological and medical systems using agent-based modelling.

TIMEPIX@school: an educational project providing schools with particle detector kits so students can detect radiation in their classroom. 

In the coming weeks, we will put the spotlight on the four projects across our channels – explaining what they are, who is using them, and how they foster innovation and benefit society at large. 

A Piece of CERN History For a Good Cause

And there is more ...

If you choose to donate 50 euro or more to the campaign, we will send you an authentic CERN data tape – both as a token of our appreciation for your contribution and a symbol of the innovation you are supporting*.

The data tapes were used at CERN between 2007 and 2022. They contain sample data from all LHC experiments – including a Higgs Boson event and matter-antimatter asymmetry.

CERN regularly migrates archived data to higher-density tapes every 3-4 years to keep up with evolving technology and increasing tape capacity. This process eliminates the need for new tape libraries, helping maintain a consistent data centre footprint despite rising data volumes. It also ensures data remains readable, preserving it for future generations. The last migration took place during 2022. It freed thousands of tape cartridge slots by migrating data stored on 7-terabyte cartridges onto 18-terabyte ones.

Donations open on the 2nd of December. Follow us on social media, or subscribe to our newsletter, to make sure you stay in the loop!

*Due to customs/postage constraints, we are unable to send tapes to all destinations. A full list of destinations will also be published on the day the campaign opens - 2/12/2025.