CERN Director-General on visit to Bern

CERN is one of the world’s oldest and largest international research organisations. It has been based in Switzerland since it was founded in 1954. It is therefore important for Switzerland to maintain close ties at the highest level with CERN. Today’s visit continued a longstanding tradition in which the Federal Councillor responsible for research welcomes each new Director-General of CERN to Bern at the start of his or her term of office.

Discussions between Director-General Thomson and Mr Parmelin focused in particular on progress made since 2021 in Switzerland's efforts to strengthen its support for CERN projects. They also discussed the upcoming steps in the decision-making process regarding the Future Circular Collider (FCC) as well as initiatives launched by Switzerland to encourage education, research and innovation stakeholders to prepare for future CERN experiments. Lastly, discussions centred on various measures to support the many applications of the research conducted at CERN

In addition to his meeting with the Mr Parmelin, the CERN Director-General attended three events organised by the State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation, Martina Hirayama. In the morning, the Director-General met with representatives of the Swiss particle physics community, particularly with the heads of the Swiss Accelerator Research and Technology programme (CHART) and the Swiss High Energy Physics for the Future Circular Collider (CHEF) initiative. The federal funding provided to these two initiatives is intended to enable Switzerland to more effectively tap into future opportunities offered by CERN. At noon, the Director-General took part in a roundtable discussion with senior representatives of the ETH Board, swissuniversities and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), among others. This roundtable explored ways in which CERN and Swiss research institutions can derive mutual benefits from their collaboration. In the afternoon, a number of Swiss business leaders and industry representatives joined the Director-General to discuss CERN’s role as a driver of innovation in Switzerland.

CERN, the world’s leading research organisation in particle physics

Founded in 1954 under the auspices of UNESCO, CERN has expanded to the north-west of Geneva, straddling the French-Swiss border, to become the world’s leading research organisation in particle physics. CERN’s flagship facility is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), housed in a 27-kilometre circular tunnel. Experiments conducted on the LHC in 2012 proved the existence of the Higgs boson particle, thereby confirming the validity of the Standard Model of particle physics This is but one of many other experiments also conducted at CERN, which brings together a community of approximately 17,000 researchers. Research conducted at CERN has led to numerous applications that have transformed society (e.g. invention of the World Wide Web) and led to advances in medicine (e.g. development of hadron therapy for the treatment of cancer). Over the course of its 72-year history, CERN has also demonstrated science’s capacity to strive for peace and has served as a model for countless projects.

To date, CERN has no fewer than 25 Member States and 11 Associate Member States. CERN’s 2026 budget forecasts total revenue of CHF 1.28 billion. Switzerland’s Member State contribution amounts to CHF 46.5 million, roughly 3.8% of the total contributions paid by CERN’s 25 Member States. Research groups using CERN’s facilities are active at most Swiss universities.