Open Doors event for the internal CERN community | Feb 15 – 16

Discover what the Innovation Space at CERN offers and how you can get involved

On 15 and 16 February, IdeaSquare, the innovation space at CERN, will open its doors for you to explore how to make the most of our facilities. IdeaSquare is a rapid prototyping and multipurpose innovation space at CERN, freely accessible to members of the CERN community. 

Over two days, you will be able to visit the facility, interact with the team and those using the space, and hear presentations about all of our activities, from prototyping to education and entrepreneurship. Prototype expo and tours of the space, including a Holodeck experience and an activity from AddictLab, will be available all day, both days. In addition, we will show the film Ghost Particle in presence of the director on the 15 February at 18:00; REGISTRATION NECESSARY FOR THE MOVIE DUE TO LIMITED SPACE

Below a glimpse of what is in the store for you; for a more detailed agenda: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1148809/timetable/#day-2023-02-15

Let’s prototype; bring your challenges!

If you are interested in getting to know the prototyping possibilities at CERN IdeaSquare, this session is for you. During this short introduction, you will become familiar with our facility, the tools, and workshops we can offer as well as the active community of the space. Dina, one of the new members of the IdeaSquare team, will run a hands-on prototyping session tackling ideas from your work through teamwork, rapid prototyping, and design thinking methods to guide and inspire you! In addition, Fernando Baltazar, one of the engineers behind the 3D-printed mask project, will discuss prototype challenges from the CERN community and how we can join forces to innovate. 

Find out about Green Village, ATTRACT, and Citizen Science initiatives.  

We will discuss how IdeaSquare can support early-stage initiatives in Detection & Imaging and how they can connect to ATTRACT or other EU-funded programmes like the citizen science Crowd4SDG initiative. We will also present a visionary initiative linking CERN’s sustainability roadmap with industrial solutions for sustainability, the Green Village. The project offers a unique setting, a town within a town, to test and scale up early-stage innovation on-site and share technologies and know-how.

Get inspired by the methodology of our educational programmes. 

This interactive session, composed of a short exercise and a presentation, is dedicated to those wanting to discover what the students visiting IdeaSquare do all day and how we inspire them to think differently. Bring your curious brain to learn and reframe your thinking while having fun. 

Deep dive into Science Gateway and the interactive events at IdeaSquare; we can help you design yours!

Learn from 2 seasoned organizers what works and what is better to avoid while planning and organizing a hackathon, a festival, or a workshop. Martin Gastal, organizer of "CMS and LHC create," and Andrew Purcell, who has contributed to the organisation of many CERN openlab events, CERN Alumni events and several editions of the CERN Webfest, talk about their experience accumulated over the years and draw lessons from them. We will also help those in the audience with drafting their events.

In Addition, Francois Briard, Head of CERN's Visitor and Events Operations, will tell us what is in store for you at the forthcoming Science Gateway.

Put your ideas in motion through embodiment and the CIJ Journal.

We will explore practices and studies from Experimental Innovation with the IdeaSquare team members. Tuuli and Romain will present how our movement influences our thinking and share what they have learned in inviting more than 600 students into embodiment practices and then invite you to experiment. Then Catarina will present some thought-provoking, contemporary findings in experimental innovation research published in the CERN IdeaSquare Journal of Experimental Innovation (CIJ).

Get real; chat with CEOs and other CERN colleagues about their inventions.

Have you ever thought your CERN invention would do great business? In this session, you will learn from CERN scientists who have gone on to be successful entrepreneurs with the support of IdeaSquare and KT. Hear from: Markus Aichler, a former CERN Fellow, on how he translated his fundamental physics knowledge into a renewable energy start-up; how Eduardo Granados created Qubik Photon; or how Aoi Senju and Philip Seifi created Colabra, an electronic notebook that works for scientists. In addition, throughout both days, we will showcase prototypes developed at IdeaSquare by our colleagues from Dune, Clear, ATTRACT,  ATLAS, CMS, ISOLDE and more.