CERN

Contact at Estonian Research Council
Helen Asuküla
Tel +372 731 7344
helen.asukula@etag.ee

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is an international organization with the mission to grant scientists technical solutions to explore the structure of the Universe.

The CERN laboratories are located on the French-Swiss border near the city of Geneva, housing several particle accelerators and experiments. These include the Large Hadron Collider, which is the largest particle and most powerful particle acceletor in the world. CERN also deals with all other activities, which are necessary to running and developing such a research infrastructure – applied physics and materials science research, technology development, engineering, IT solutions, administrative work, etc.

CERN Member States can be represented in the CERN Council and other committees. Businesses from these countries can participate in CERN procurement calls and citizens can apply for job positions at CERN. There are 23 Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. Cyprus, Estonia and Slovenia are Associate Member States in the pre-stage to Membership. Croatia, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Turkey and Ukraine are Associate Member States.

Estonia became an Associate Member State in the pre-stage to Membership in 2021. The main contact for CERN in Estonia are Enterprise Estonia and National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics (NICPB). Examples of Estonia’s activities at CERN:

  • NICPB is a member of the CMS collaboration
  • NICPB houses a Tier-2 computing centre for the LHC CMS detector
  • University of Tartu researchers participate in the Crystal Clear Collaboration, CLIC research projects and the CLOUD experiment
  • Tallinn Univesity of Technology is participating in the I.FAST project

CERN employs about 2500 people – from physicists and IT specialists to chefs. CERN salaries are excempt from national income taxes. Employees get 6 weeks paid leave and 2 week Christmas break annually; additional possibilities exist for visiting home and familiy related activities. CERN provides their employees a comprehensive social security scheme and many enrichment possibilities.

All job offers and applying: https://careers.cern/alljobs

In additional to the job offers, there are also several thematic programmes. More details about the programmes can be found on CERN’s homepage here.