CERN School of Computing

CERN School of Computing
Name	CERN School of Computing
Established	1970s
Type	Summer school
Location	CERN, Geneva
Country	Switzerland

CERN School of Computing is an advanced international summer school focused on computing for particle physics and related scientific domains. It brings together participants, lecturers and organisers from major laboratories, universities and companies to teach topics ranging from software engineering to data analysis and distributed computing. The school serves as a nexus connecting research centres, projects and institutions across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

History

The school traces its roots to collaborative activities among CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research, European Laboratory for Particle Physics, Serpukhov era contacts and early computing initiatives associated with ENIAC-era influences and laboratory computing needs. Early interactions involved personnel from Fermilab, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, DESY, KEK, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Dubna contributing to an evolving programme influenced by projects such as LEP, LHC, UA1 experiment, UA2 experiment and computing efforts tied to WorldWideWeb origins. Influential figures connected to the school's early ethos include researchers associated with Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Donald Knuth, John von Neumann-era legacies, and computing groups from Imperial College London, University of Oxford, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over decades the school adapted to shifts driven by collaborations like Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, GridPP, Open Science Grid and experiments such as ATLAS experiment, CMS experiment, ALICE experiment and LHCb experiment.

Organisation and Governance

Governance involves a steering committee linked to CERN Council, with coordination among institutes including IN2P3, INFN, NIKHEF, CIEMAT, IFIC, TRIUMF, IHEP (Beijing), Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institute and national funding agencies like European Commission programmes and grant frameworks associated with Horizon 2020 and successor initiatives. Administrative oversight is provided by staff from CERN IT Department, scheduling liaison with groups such as WLCG management, and collaboration with academic departments at University of Geneva and Université de Lausanne. Pedagogical direction has involved experts from Software Carpentry, Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, OpenStack Foundation and standards bodies like World Wide Web Consortium and IEEE. Partnerships have included technology firms represented by IBM, Google, Microsoft Research, HP, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Red Hat, NVIDIA, and ARM Holdings.

Curriculum and Courses

Course content spans topics drawn from real-world projects including ROOT (software), Geant4, Gaudi (software), HEPdata, RIVET, CernVM, EOS (CERN) and platforms like Docker, Kubernetes, Hadoop, Spark (software), TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn, and languages such as C++, Python (programming language), Fortran, Java (programming language). Lectures often reference data management strategies pioneered by Tiered computing models in WLCG and algorithms used in Monte Carlo method implementations from Pythia, Herwig (software), SHERPA (software). Practical sessions draw on tools and methodologies from Agile software development, DevOps practices championed by contributors at GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket (Atlassian), and version control via Git. Specialized modules address distributed analysis linked to CernVM-FS, provenance with REANA, workflow orchestration inspired by HTCondor, container registries used by Docker Hub, and performance analysis referencing libraries like BLAS and LAPACK.

Participants and Selection

Participants include postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, software engineers and technical staff nominated by institutions including University of Manchester, University College London, University of Edinburgh, Stockholm University, University of Helsinki, University of Tokyo, Tsinghua University, Peking University, National Taiwan University, Seoul National University, McGill University, University of Toronto, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley and California Institute of Technology. Selection criteria involve academic merit, project relevance, and endorsements from supervisors at organisations like CERN Experiments, ATLAS Collaboration, CMS Collaboration, ALICE Collaboration, LHCb Collaboration and national laboratories including Los Alamos National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. Sponsorships and fellowships have been provided by bodies such as ERC, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and industrial partners.

Locations and Frequency

Traditionally held annually at locations connected to CERN facilities in Geneva, the programme has also convened at partner sites in cities affiliated with collaborating laboratories and universities such as Frascati, Hamburg, Tokyo, Beijing, Bangalore, Dubna, Pune, Prague, Stockholm, Barcelona, Lisbon, Zurich and Geneva Airport proximate venues. Frequency has varied with scheduling constraints, conference calendars including CHEP and ICHEP, and funding cycles tied to collaborative projects like European Strategy for Particle Physics. Remote and hybrid editions have incorporated platforms from Zoom Video Communications, Indico (software), Mattermost, Slack (software), and Jitsi.

Notable Alumni and Contributions

Alumni and contributors have gone on to roles at institutions such as CERN, Fermilab, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, DESY, KEK, TRIUMF, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bell Labs, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Facebook AI Research, NVIDIA Research, Apple Inc., Siemens, Bosch, Ericsson, Siemens Healthineers, and academia at Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University, Stanford University, ETH Zurich, EPFL, Imperial College London and Johns Hopkins University. Contributions include advances incorporated into ROOT (software), improvements to Geant4, development of workflow tools used in WLCG, enhancements to CernVM-FS, and adoption of machine learning pipelines informed by alumni work with TensorFlow and PyTorch. The school's network feeds collaborations that have influenced experiments such as ATLAS experiment, CMS experiment, Alice experiment, LHCb experiment, accelerator projects like High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, detector initiatives linked to ATLAS Inner Detector Upgrade and software frameworks employed in observatories including Square Kilometre Array and Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

Category:Schools