CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is home to the famous Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, the world's largest machine.

CERN is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions. The LHC detector is able to produce the highest manmade energy collisions ever possible: scientists around the world will be able to see further than ever before into the secret events of the early Universe.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

Grids at CERN

CERN forms the centre of the world's largest computing grid for research: the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid.

CERN was also home to HQ for the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project, a massive international multi-science grid contributing to global science projects across the globe.