Mega Science: CERN has 400 Indian Scientists

BENGALURU: India is working on multiple mega-science projects domestically, and in collaboration with scientists from other countries, but one of its biggest contributions to a global science project has been to CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), which has scientists from 111 countries working there.
On Friday, Fabiola Gianotti, Director General (DG), CERN, said in Bengaluru that India, which became an associate member at CERN only in 2017 sends 1.1% of the total annual budget of the organisation, while the number of scientists from India constitutes 2.2% of the 18,000 people working there. She is in the city visiting Vigyan Samagam, an exhibition jointly organised by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Department of Science, and the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM).

“There are 18,000 scientists, belonging to 111 nationalities at CERN, and 400 of them are from India. Most of these 400 are from institutes within India, while some also come through affiliations of other premier institutes from across the world, mostly the US,” Gianotti said.
CERN, which was established post World War II (1954) to bring scientific excellence back to Europe while also trying for peaceful collaboration has today become a global organisation. Even countries that do not enjoy political alliances—India and China for instance—work together at CERN.
The organisation has also made tremendous contributions to both science in particular and society in general. Some examples of CERN discoveries or inventions being used in everyday life are the World Wide Web (WWW) and PET scan (used in cancer diagnosis).

Indian Contribution

Speaking specifically about the high school teachers training programme at CERN, she said that every year about 1,000 teachers use the facilities and expertise at the organisation, but there are very few from India.
“India can do a lot better in this aspect. Training of high school teachers is very important if we have to instill the spirit of science among students,” she said. CERN’s total annual budget is about 12,000 million Swiss Franc and India contributes about 1.1% of it.
Later, speaking with the media at a roundtable, she said that India had been contributing significantly to various programmes at CERN—computing, power supply systems, hi-tech components, high precision mechanics, etc—and that the organisation was currently in talks with many more industries.
“There is a lot of in-kind contribution from India and we are now exploring new collaborations with the industries. And of course, we will be working with scientists,” she said.
It is noteworthy that CERN’s greatest achievement so far, the finding of the Higgs boson, also had attributed credit to India’s Satyendra Nath Bose. On why the letter ‘b’ in boson (to depict Bose’s contribution) was not in upper case like Higgs, which is about Peter W Higgs, she said: “…It is because boson has now become an attribute for a class of particles like Higgs and W particle. It is not in capitals because it has attained the status of an attribute and is not just a name like Higgs.”

20% Women

Further elaborating on the human resource at CERN, Gianotti said: “…Lack of opportunities in research sees that typically only 10% of all post-doctorates who come to CERN remain in particle physics.”
And, of the 18,000 scientists at the organisation, 20% are women, which she said was not enough. “That said, there has been a tremendous improvement. At the time I joined in 1995, only 8% of CERN was women. Today, we are doing a lot more, including bringing parity both in terms of salaries and in terms of growth. We are also putting in place infrastructures like creche and nursery. We will soon be adding another nursery,” she said.

Source: ToI

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