Beamline for Schools Competition 2017 Supporters Event

Beamline for Schools Competition 2017 Supporters Event

Fri, 29/09/2017 - 12:12

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By papant

 

Group photo at IdeaSquare with the BL4S 2017 winners, the BL4S project leader, representatives from the Arconic Foundation and National Instruments, and the CERN Partnerships & Fundraising team (Image: Sophia Elizabeth Bennett /CERN)

Earlier this week, the CERN & Society Foundation welcomed the supporters of the 2017 Beamline for Schools Competition in a special event taking place in one of the most innovative venues at CERN, IdeaSquare.

Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer, CERN & Society Foundation Board Member and former CERN Director-General, congratulated the winners and thanked the Arconic Foundation, the Motorola Solutions Foundation, National Instruments and all volunteers for enabling the competition.

Representatives from the Arconic Foundation and National Instruments met with the winning teams,  “Charging Cavaliers” from Canada and “TCO-ASA” from Italy, exchanged ideas on the shared passion for scientific education and discussed about the students’ future academic and career aspirations. The Motorola Solutions Foundation’s team, unable to partake in the event, addressed a message to the students.  

The students presented their experimental proposals and highlights from their first days at CERN and received encouraging comments and inspiring messages from the supporters.

BL4S 2017 Supporters Event at IdeaSquare (Images: Sophia Elizabeth Bennett /CERN)

'This is the second year we have been working with CERN and the CERN & Society Foundation and we are all very excited to see the evolution and growing impact of this Competition engaging students with STEM’, noted Jasper van Zon, representative of the Arconic Foundation. Meanwhile, in a message read to the audience, the Motorola Solutions Foundation congratulated the students and urged them to cultivate their passion for science and embark into new scientific endeavours. Finally, Robert Morton from National Instruments, emphasised the great potential of Beamline for Schools as 'it reflects our [National Instrument’s] commitment to the value of experimentation and of putting theory in practice'.

The supporters also had the chance to visit the Synchrocyclotron, the first particle accelerator ever built at CERN, the ‘Universe of Particles’ exhibition, the T9 experimental area, where the Beamline for Schools experiments are conducted, as well as CERN’s newest linear accelerator (LINAC4), scheduled to become the source of proton beams for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) after the long shutdown in 2019-2020.