IdeaSquare - the innovation space at CERN

At the opening of the EIT Education and Skills Days conference on 15–16 October in Brussels, one sentence set the tone: “Resilience is not built in factories.” CERN IdeaSquare’s Ole Werner was there representing #TECH2X to find out more.

Learn more: ideasquare.cern/node/473

From 20 to 24 October 2025, more than 40 participants from NGT @cmsexperiment.bsky.social, @atlasexperiment.bsky.social, and other NGT work packages gathered at IdeaSquare for the second edition of the Next Generation Triggers Hackathon.

Learn more: ideasquare.cern/node/472

The peace particle
New documentary on the history and future of CERN

Information and registration: indico.cern.ch/e/peace-part...

Call for papers for a CIJ special issue on 'Co-creation'!

Learn more: e-publishing.cern.ch/index.php/CI...

IdeaSquare recently received the 2025 cohort of students from the TechFoward Programme – an advanced training course that connects academic research with market innovation.

Learn more: ideasquare.cern/node/466

Among the elements the teams are working on, we can find, for example, the correlator trigger, the particle flow in L1T scouting workflow, or even the orchestration systems.

Happy hacking!

#NextGenTriggers

For the 2nd NextGenTriggers Hackathon, members of @cmsexperiment.bsky.social and @atlasexperiment.bsky.social divide into teams and meet frequently to discuss how each solves one problem and how they'll try to solve the next.

LHC experiments need innovation to squeeze every single drop of performance from their current and future detectors. Enabling such innovation requires a lot of time and focus, and can benefit from exchanges with experts working in other areas or groups.

Such questions are strategically important for the future of fundamental science, which is increasingly often big science.

What, then, will be the economic impact of building a gravitational-wave detector hundreds of metres underground in some abandoned mines? What will be the societal impact of several kilometres of lasers and mirrors?

Most physicists would have no expectation that a deeper knowledge of gravitational waves will have any practical usage in the foreseeable future.

Two takes on the economics of big science – CERN Courier Economist from the University of Milan, Massimo Florio, reviews "Big Science, Innovation & Societal Contributions" and "The Economics of Big Science 2.0".

Learn more about two books that tackle big science's socio-economic impacts head on, though with quite different approaches. Markus Nordberg and Pablo Garcia Tello from IdeaSquare contributed to one of them: Big Science, Innovation & Societal Contributions.

cerncourier.com/a/two-takes-...

The workshop brings together CERN researchers, Swiss academic makerspaces, FabLab members, and students to jointly explore hybrid collaboration models.

The format is based on three parallel groups of about five people each, with each group exploring a single scenario—allowing for up to three different scenarios and around 15 participants in total.

Participants will co-create fictional quick start guides as tangible storytelling artifacts, envisioning future tools, workflows, and hybrid setups. While inspired by ubiquitous computing, the workshop is open to any technology that could enable distributed prototyping—low- or high-tech.

This one-day workshop invites participants to explore hybrid scientific and maker collaboration through the lens of remote physical prototyping. Using Design Fiction, they will imagine speculative but grounded scenarios where interdisciplinary teams prototype together across distance.

Design Fiction Workshop for Hybrid Prototyping at IdeaSquare on Oct. 31!

Register now: indico.cern.ch/event/1593064/

If you are part of the CERN community, you can come and visit this exhibition anytime inside IdeaSquare, right next to the entrance!

Each year, IdeaSquare hosts a variety of student groups, challenging them to develop solutions that address pressing global issues. In this exhibition, discover some of the prototypes they made at IdeaSquare!

Prototype exhibition opens at IdeaSquare!
What if our student projects could unlock unseen solutions for global challenges?
Read more here: ideasquare.cern/node/450
@cern.bsky.social

Read the @cerncourier.bsky.social review of New Frontiers in Science in the Era of AI, a book to which IdeaSquare contributed a chapter

New frontiers in science in the era of AI – CERN Courier New Frontiers in Science in the Era of AI arrives with a clear mission: to contextualise AI within the long arc of scientific thought and current research frontiers.

At a time when artificial intelligence is more buzzword than substance in many corners of public discourse, this book arrives with a clear mission: to contextualise AI within the long arc of scientific thought and current research frontiers.

cerncourier.com/a/new-fronti...

Tinker Lab in IdeaSquare!

What's the value of out-of-box thinking?

Open to everyone: visit.cern/tinker-lab
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Brico Lab à IdeaSquare !

Quelle est la valeur de la créativité ?

Ouvert à toutes et tous : visit.cern/fr/tinker-lab

@cern.bsky.social

They also visited @cern.bsky.social facilities such as the #AMS, a CERN experiment looking for dark matter, antimatter and missing matter from a module on the International Space Station.

By making order-of-magnitude calculations and systemic impact assessments, they were able to look at societal systems in a holistic and comprehensive manner. This perspective allowed them to consider possible ripple effects or unintended consequences of their actions and ideas.

In their second week, they embarked on a thought-experiment, lifting their lenses from Earth and travelling to an Earth-like exoplanet to envision how a society might function there. They focused on the survival phase at landing.

@darkmatteraus.bsky.social and Swinburne University of Technology participants had the chance to observe and interact with other student teams and attend different masterclasses: from value proposition design to prototyping and science communication.

Nearly 40 women engaged in hands-on AI and movement analysis training during the ‘Women in Motion’ workshop at CERN IdeaSquare.

Learn more: ideasquare.cern/node/436

#RightsTechWomen #WomenInTechnologyAtCERN

YouTube video by ATTRACT EU ATTRACT Final Conference

ATTRACT hosted its Final Conference served as a dynamic platform for bringing together all key actors involved in ATTRACT phase 2 to showcase their achievements and impact.

Watch this video that summarizes this significant milestone for ATTRACT phase 2.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p1y...

Hacking quantum materials for sustainable development!

In July 35 students from over 20 countries came together at IdeaSquare to take part in a hackathon co-organised by #OpenQuantumInstitute and University of Geneva (Geneva Responsible Entrepreneurship Center)

Learn more: ideasquare.cern/node/431