Lapland UAS and European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN sign cooperation agreement

With the newly signed agreement extending until 2018, the UAS has the opportunity to send two mechanical engineering students to work at CERN for a summer and participate in designing the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in a student project.

Principal Lecturer Lauri Kantola (mechanical engineering), Senior Lecturer Kenneth Karlsson (information and communication technology) and Senior Lecturer Ari Pikkarainen (mechanical engineering) worked for a while at CERN in previously agreed cooperation projects just before the new agreement was signed.

The mechanical engineering project concentrated on cryostat, which can be used to test the properties of various materials near the absolute-zero temperature (4.2 Kelvin). The structure of cryostat is re-designed to suit various testing methods. This work is carried out in Finland as students' theses.

The prototype of the virtual model manufactured for CERN by the information and communication technology training laboratory received excellent feedback. Virtualisation cooperation was also discussed with the persons responsible for the publication of the open data of the CMS test.

Lapland UAS and CERN aim to establish a permanent cooperation relationship, whereby the various fields of the UAS can realise projects together with CERN. With the agreement, degree programmes can sign covered agreements to define the work to be carried out in more detail. The information and communication technology training is preparing its own covered agreement.

Lapland University of Applied Sciences Rector Martti Lampela and CERN Head of Engineering Roberto Saban signed the cooperation agreement at CERN headquarters in Switzerland on 3 December 2015.

More information:
Senior Teacher Lauri Kantola (mechanical engineering, Kemi), tel. +358 50 337 6901
Lecturer Kenneth Karlsson (information and communication technology, Rovaniemi), tel. +358 40 726 6871
Lecturer Ari Pikkarainen (mechanical engineering, Kemi), tel. +358 50 310 9437

Emails are in the format firstname.lastname@lapinamk.fi.

Photos: CERN

Background

CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire)
studies the basic structure of the universe. The physicists and engineers working at CERN have available the world's most extensive research technology to study the essence of matter and the forces holding it together. 21 countries are members states of the organization. Finland became a CERN member in 1991. Among other inventions, the World Wide Web and the particle collider have been developed at CERN.

LHC (Large Hadron Collider)
is the world's largest particle accelerator. It is 27km long, and it is used to study the Big Bang and the moment just after it. With the accelerator and its test stations, collisions of various particle beams and the phenomena and particles created in them can be studied.