Technologies developed for HEP experiments have many applications in our daily lives. In the past 60 years, CERN has been one of the places where new technologies were developed to answer some of the fundamental questions of modern physics. These technologies that emerged from the collaboration of CERN with various institutes worldwide are exploited and further developed resulting in innovative new products and services that have changed our daily lives.

The main aim of CERN’s Knowledge Transfer group is to maximise the likelihood that new technologies will find applications outside the field of high-energy physics. Giovanni Anelli, head of the KT group, says: “We want to show that investing in fundamental research can be beneficial for society. Beyond research in fundamental physics, which is the primary mission of the organization, there are numerous applications of these technologies from which we can derive benefits.”

Today, CERN is one of the largest innovation hubs in the world. In order to explore new scientific frontiers, scientists need to design and build new instrumentation for the detectors and the accelerators. Innovation is largely driven by basic research and the KT group ensures that this research will make an impact outside the HEP community.

Public spending on basic research is entirely justifiable, if we consider the experimental results and fantastic discoveries of all these years. Giovanni Anelli notes: “I have been working at CERN for many years and I strongly believe that humanity not only needs, but I would say deserves an organization like CERN.” However, funding agencies and ministries often confront the question of why financing HEP instead of other fields of research. The Knowledge Transfer group answers this question by showing that investment in High Energy Physics has many spin-offs. For Giovanni “this has been and is one of the main drives of our work.”

KT at CERN happens through many different channels. From peer reviewed scientific publications to outreach events, the knowledge gained at CERN is transferred and diffused to our society. Giovanni adds: “Many of my colleagues in the Physics Department give lectures in conferences or summer schools and share the knowledge acquired through research.” This is one of the ways in which CERN transfers knowledge to society. Giovanni continues: “KT also takes place when we sign a procurement contract for high-tech goods or services with companies that have to work with us and hence learn about our technologies.” Finally, KT concerns the application of technologies developed at CERN to other fields like medicine or computing. The KT group offers the tools and the know-how that are necessary to assist people in the technical departments to carry out these projects. Advice on life sciences matters, patentability studies, market assessments, contract negotiations are some of the services offered by the KT group. But one of the key added values of the group in the KT process is  finding, together with the technical experts, what is the best channel to make KT happen and have the highest impact on society.

Artist’s view of an ENVISION PET-prototype for hadron-therapy monitoring. (Credit: CERN)

Technologies created at CERN are open to any interested company for further investment or development”. There is a small turnover from KT activities that returns to the laboratory and the team that built this technology. However, their aim is not to sponsor fundamental research. Giovanni explains: “That’s not the model that I have in mind. I firmly believe that fundamental research should be publicly funded by the member states. CERN's central place in fundamental research should be preserved, but at the same time we need to fully benefit from the potential applications that research conducted here might have in other fields".

Challenges

The transfer of technologies that have been developed at CERN to other fields can be difficult. As most of the technologies are forefront high tech and expensive and having a competitive advantage is an important factor in the industry, the number of companies that could licence these technologies is limited.

The KT group has regular meetings with the departmental representatives to discuss the technologies developed by the different groups within a department. Michael Moll and Michael Campbell serve as representatives for the PH department. As a result, the KT group has built a large technology portfolio.

Giovanni Anelli advises the members of the PH to “approach the group as soon as they feel that they work on something which has potential for KT and start discussing.” KT has also launched a half-day internal training at CERN offering “an introduction to knowledge transfer tools.” The first course had 50 participants and the KT team plans to repeat it regularly. “The idea behind the course is to explain what are the main steps in the KT process, what the KT group does, and introduce the people of our team.”

Success Stories

Medipix is one of the best examples of a successful transfer. Many commercial licences related to chips developed in the framework of the Medipix2 Collaboration have been issued. The CERN @School project uses Timepix chips as a common technology platform to teach radiation physics to high-school student. Medipix is also a very good example of how CERN’s technologies can be further improved by technology transfer. The development of the Timepix3 chip in the Medipix3 Collaboration led directly to the adoption of a similar approach for the LHCb VELO upgrade. Moreover, we have the developments of the Crystal Clear Collaboration, studying new crystals that are used in PET on crystals and the software developments, mainly in the field of simulations, within the SFT group.

The astronaut Chris Cassidy working near the Timepix USB on the International Space Station.

Crystal matrices for the PET probe, left, and the external plate.

Within the DT group CO2 cooling sytems like TRACI and microfluidic scintillation detectors are developed for example aiming for technology transfer. MicroScint, is a recent example as it was patented in 2013 with the support of FP-KT Group; it was developed by CERN PH department in collaboration with the EPFL Microsystems Laboratory LMIS4 and has been demonstrated to reconstruct the two coordinates of a particle's track in a plane with a single microfluidic channel. CERN develops these technologies and as a result we learned many things that can be used by the physics experiments. Another impressive and very successful example is the development of single-mask technology gaseous electron mulitpliers (GEMs). Several licenses for this technology have been concluded with companies. They will take up the production of GEMs, pay royalties to CERN and relive the work load in the PH-DT MPT workshop that is up to now charged with the production. Therefore, not only industry is profiting in this context, but also CERN and the HEP detector community, as the upgrade of detectors with large area GEMs can only be realized with highly qualified industrial production capabilities.

Prototype of the UV detector based on GEM technology, suitable for very sensitive flame detection.

As for the future, Giovanni notes: “I would like to see more successful examples of KT. I would like to engage more people in technical departments and invite them to think about the benefits of KT for CERN and about the applications of their technologies. Anyone who works for CERN can get in touch with the KT group in order to discuss his or her ideas.”

For a full list of the present activities visit the KT webpages: http://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/