History of Cooperation Between Latvia and CERN

Milestones in the history of cooperation between CERN and Latvia

• The beginning of today's collaboration can be considered to be 2012, when Riga Technical University (RTU) and CERN signed an international cooperation agreement (ICA), which is still active more than 10 years later. The ICA was facilitated by RTU professor Toms Torims, who has since overseen Latvia's collaboration with CERN and served as Latvia's representative to the organization.
• In 2015, Latvia joined the Future Circular Collider (FCC) Study.
• From 2017 to 2023, the coordination of Latvia's collaboration with CERN was managed by the RTU Center for High Energy Particle Physics and Accelerator Technology, which functioned as CERN's national contact point in Latvia.
• In 2017, the Latvian consortium joined the CMS experiment with 3 RTU scientists.
• in 2020, a pilot project was carried out to consolidate HPC resources into a single Tier-2 data centre. A federated Latvian CERN CMS Tier-2 centre is operational from 2024.
• In 2020, Latvia joined the MEDICIS experiment.
• On August 2, 2021, after years of concerted effort and growth, Latvia officially became an associate member of CERN.
• In December 2022, the Latvian government decided that Latvia should become a full member of CERN, with the Ministry of Education and Science informing the CERN Council of this decision in March 2023.
• In 2023, the coordination between Latvia and CERN was undertaken by the CERN National Contact Point for Latvia, while the development of scientific activities was carried out by the Institute of Particle Physics and Accelerator Technology established at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology of RTU.
• Efforts are underway to attain a full membership status in CERN as soon as possible.