In the PH Plenary Meeting that took place on 22 January Livio Mapelli, Head of the PH Department, presented the activities of the PH in 2014, and gave an overview of its plans for the future. Fabiola Gianotti, the incoming DG, attended the Meeting and was notified of the current developments and the upcoming challenges that the Department will face.

First, the LS1 upgrades and the maintenance and consolidation work of the LHC experiments were outlined, as well as their preparations for Run-2 and LS2, which is planned for 2018. According to the schedule of the LHC for 2015, the beam will return in March after a machine checkout, and the physics programme will restart in May. Despite LS1, scientific output from Run-1 data has proceeded at an undiminished rate, as about 300 CERN–PH–EP preprints were published in 2014.

In addition, the status of the non-LHC experiments was presented, including the upgrades and plans of fixed target experiments such as CLOUD, COMPASS and NA62, and the programmes of AD and ISOLDE. The development plans and the ongoing activities of the Linear Collider Detector were also described.

As for the Theory Division, it was noted that the high levels of excellence and creativity were maintained in all vital areas of theoretical physics: Standard Model, cosmology, string theory, heavy ion physics.

A summary of the activities of the Support Groups (DT, SFT, ESE) in 2014 followed. The DT Group offered maintenance and consolidation support for all LHC experiments and helped in the completion of  NA62; ESE designed electronics for NA62, ATLAS and CMS; SFT continued the development and maintenance of Geant4, ROOT and CernVM.

In the end of the presentation, the Medium-Term Plan for 2015-2019 was set out, including the budget as well as the projects and studies planned for this period, namely the LHC upgrades, the Energy Frontier studies and Diversity Activity for the physics program.

Following the end of the Plenary Meeting, the participants enjoyed an aperitif at Restaurant 1.

Read more on the indico site of this event: https://indico.cern.ch/event/357625/