On 11 September, CERN received a visit from Ana Brnabić, Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia, and Mladen Šarčević, Serbia’s Minister of Education, Science and Technological Development. The Serbian delegation was welcomed in the Main Building by CERN’s Director-General, Fabiola Gianotti, the Director for International Relations, Charlotte Warakaulle, the Director for Accelerators and Technology, Frédérick Bordry, the Director for Finance and Human Resources, Martin Steinacher, the Head of Relations with Associate and non-Member States, Emmanuel Tsesmelis, and the principal adviser for relations with Serbia, Christoph Schäfer.

After a general introduction to CERN’s activities, the Serbian ministers and their delegation visited the Synchrocyclotron and the ATLAS control room. Following a tour and lunch with members of CERN’s Serbian community, a collaboration agreement was signed between CERN and Serbia. The delegation was then taken to Point 5 of the LHC to visit the CMS experiment, then to the magnet assembly hall, the S’Cool LAB facility, and the Universe of Particles exhibition.

Serbia is an Associate Member State in the pre-stage to CERN membership and has about thirty users who participate in several experiments including the two major LHC experiments, ATLAS and CMS.