The 2019 CERN Beamline for Schools winners: (from left) Team from the West High School in Salt Lake City, USA (Image: Kara Budge) and team from the Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen, Netherlands (Image: Martin Mug).

We are pleased to announce that high school students from the Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen, The Netherlands, and the West High School in Salt Lake City, USA, have been announced as this year’s winners of the Beamline for Schools Competition 2019 (BL4S). Well done to both of them! In October, the winning teams will carry out their proposed experiments, which will look at fundamental differences between matter and antimatter, together with the help of professional scientists from CERN and DESY.

Taking into consideration creativity, motivation, feasibility and scientific method, experts had a hard time choosing the two winners. The shortlist consisted of 20 teams, ten of which received a special mention. This is the second time that a Dutch team has won the competition - previous winners came from schools in the Netherlands, Greece, Italy (twice), South Africa, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, India and the Philippines.

Due to the second Long Shutdown of CERN’s accelerators for maintenance and upgrade, there is currently no beam at CERN, which has opened up opportunities to explore partnerships with other laboratories. The 2019 edition of Beamline for Schools will therefore take place at the research centre DESY in Hamburg, Germany - one of the world’s leading accelerator centres and Germany's national laboratory for particle physics, accelerators and photon science

The Beamline for Schools Competition is an education and outreach project funded by the CERN & Society Foundation, supported by individual donors, foundations and companies. In 2019, the project is partially funded by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation; additional contributions have been received from the Motorola Solutions Foundation, Amgen Switzerland AG as well as the Ernest Solvay Fund, managed by the King Baudouin Foundation.

For further information read the full press release or visit the Beamline for Schools website.