Croatia officially joins CERN

After decades of a fruitful yet unofficial scientific relationship, Croatia has finally become a member of CERN. On 28 February, Fabiola Gianotti, director-general of CERN, and Blaženka Divjak, Croatia’s minister of science and education, signed an agreement giving Croatia associate membership in the world’s leading particle-physics laboratory.

“Croatian scientists have made important contributions to a large variety of experiments at CERN for almost four decades,” Gianotti said. “And as an associate member, new opportunities open up for Croatia in scientific collaboration, technological development, education, and training.”

Last week’s signing, which was attended by Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenković, was welcomed with excitement in the Croatian science community, which has been generally disappointed with years of limited government investment in science. The country has one of the smallest budgets for research and innovation among European Union nations—about 0.86% of GDP. The CERN agreement marks Croatia’s first membership in a major international science organization; it also signed a cooperation agreement with the European Space Agency last year.

Many Croatian physicists hope that membership, which costs 1 million Swiss francs per year, will boost the country’s scientific and technological output. When the affiliation takes effect later this year, Croatian citizens will be eligible for CERN staff positions, and Croatian companies will be able to bid for CERN contracts, opening up opportunities for industrial collaboration in advanced technologies.

Croatia’s involvement in CERN actually goes back farther than the 40 years cited at the signing by Gianotti. When the laboratory was established in 1954, Croatia was part of the Republic of Yugoslavia, one of CERN’s 12 founding member states. Although Yugoslavia left CERN in 1961, Croatian scientists and engineers remained contributors. In CERN’s early years, the Zagreb-based electrical engineering firm Rade Končar built part of the main beam-bending magnets of the Proton Synchrotron, then the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. Researchers from Croatian institutes then worked on the heavy-ion program for the next-generation Super Proton Synchrotron in the 1970s.

Croatian researchers have also figured prominently in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. In the 1980s and 1990s, physicists Guy Paić and Danilo Vranić made important contributions in creating and developing the ALICE experiment, while Daniel Denegri was one of the leading members of the CMS collaboration. In the mid 1990s, research groups from the universities of Split and Zagreb officially joined the two collaborations, and in recent years they contributed to the discovery and precision measurements of the Higgs boson.

Scientists from Croatia have also been involved in other CERN experiments, such as CAST, NA61, ISOLDE, nTOF, and OPERA. It is no wonder that for years many of them lobbied for Croatia to apply for CERN membership. The country began the application process in 2014.

“I was waiting more than 25 years for this,” says Ivica Puljak, leader of the Croatian CERN group at the University of Split. Puljak co-convened a group that analyzed the Higgs boson’s decay into Z-boson pairs. CERN membership, he says, will fully integrate Croatian science with modern science trends and will bring better access to new technologies and science education programs. “It is excellent news for Croatian science and therefore for the whole society,” he says.

Vedrana Simičević is a writer and editor based in Rijeka, Croatia.