CERN openlab is a unique public-private partnership that works to accelerate the development of cutting-edge ICT solutions for the worldwide LHC community and wider scientific research. Through CERN openlab, CERN collaborates with leading ICT companies and research institutes.
Within this framework, CERN provides access to its complex ICT infrastructure and its engineering experience — in some cases even extended to collaborating institutes worldwide. Testing in CERN’s demanding environment provides the ICT industry collaborators with valuable feedback on their products, while enabling CERN to assess the merits of new technologies in their early stages of development for possible future use. This framework also offers a neutral ground for carrying out advanced research-and-development activities with more than one company.
In 2017 CERN openlab published in 2017 a white paper [PDF] identifying the major ICT challenges that face CERN and other ‘big science’ projects in the coming years in order to collaborate with the industry and research institutes to tackle them.
It began its eighth three-year phase in 2024.
