Last week, CERN openlab held its annual technical workshop. The event, which took place on 5-6 November, saw representatives of the CERN openlab collaborating companies and organisations gather in the CERN IT Department.

On the first day of the event, presentations were given highlighting the progress made by the CERN openlab projects since the launch of public-private partnership’s fifth phase earlier this year. Alberto Di Meglio, head of CERN openlab, also presented an overview of the major developments over this time period. “16 distinct projects have been launched, and the collaboration has grown to include 14 members, with other public research institutions now working with us for the first time,” explains Di Meglio. “Here at CERN, we’re collaborating closely with the LHC experiments, and we’ve started new collaborations with other CERN initiatives, including IdeaSquare, the Knowledge Transfer Office, and the CERN Medical Applications Study Group”.

Today, the CERN openlab collaboration consists of partners Huawei, Intel, Oracle, and Siemens; contributors Cisco, Rackspace, Seagate, Brocade, and IDT; associates Comtrade and Yandex; and research members Newcastle University, GSI, and EMBL-EBI.

On the second day of the event, presentations were given by researchers from a range of institutions, including the LHC experiments and Fermilab, highlighting key ICT challenges to be addressed in the coming years. These challenges, which underpin future progress in several fields of scientific research, will help shape CERN openlab’s work: they will play a central role in defining the areas for collaboration.

If you missed the workshop and would like to find out more, please visit the event’s Indico page. Here you can find slides of the presentations given at the event, participant details, and more.