Slovenia to become full member of CERN in June

Slovenia will become the 25th member of CERN. "It will also become a co-owner of the entire CERN infrastructure. This will be our laboratory too, and we will decide in what direction to develop, what to build, where to focus our talents, what to discover," explained Dr Jure Gašparič, State Secretary for Science and Innovation at the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation. Slovenia will be granted full membership at the end of June, while the official ceremony will be held on 3 July. On that day, Slovenian flag will be flown in front of CERN.

Slovenian researchers have been collaborating with CERN for half a century. This collaboration strengthened in 2016, when Slovenia became an Associate Member, but only full membership will grant it full access to CERN. This will open new opportunities for researchers and Slovenian companies, in particular high-tech ones.

CERN also plays an important role in education. Its education and outreach programmes target learners from all generations, from children, explaining science to them in a way they can understand, to doctoral and post-doctoral students. CERN values Slovenian knowledge. This March, Dr Andrej Gorišek from the Jožef Stefan Institute assumed the position of head coordinator of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider – currently the leading CERN instrument, while in May, Dr Anja Kranjc Horvat became the Co-Chair of the International Particle Physics Outreach Group.