I’d like to welcome you back and wish you all a very happy new year. I hope you managed to have a restful and enjoyable break.
We have a very exciting year ahead of us as LHC Run 3 gets under way, the FCC Feasibility Study continues to progress and we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson – to cite just three of the highlights that await us.
The epidemiological situation has obliged us to move to COVID Level 4 – Red as the year begins. This does not equate to a return to safe mode, and I hope it will be short-lived. Despite the fact that the now-dominant Omicron variant is highly transmissible, there are promising indicators that it may lead to less severe illness. We will be monitoring the situation carefully, with a view to relaxing our COVID level as soon as it is safe to do so.
In the meantime, the Directorate’s traditional beginning-of-the-year presentation on 13 January will be fully online. We’ll be taking a look back at the remarkable accomplishments of 2021, made possible thanks to the hard work of the full CERN community, and we’ll be looking forward to a great year ahead. I hope that many of you will be able to join us.
The meeting will be held by webcast only.