30 November 2020

Discovery Day – Innovate with CERN  • Knowledge transfer event proves popular

Big Science Sweden is developing a Knowledge Transfer Office within Big Science, and is establishing collaboration with the CERN Knowledge Transfer Group. In early November, CERN and Big Science Sweden hosted their first joint event, Discovery Day – Innovate with CERN.

No fewer than 25 experts from CERN and representatives from 13 Swedish companies, e.g. GKN Aerospace, Volvo Cars, ABB, and Alfa Laval, met to discuss future collaboration.

In breakout sessions CERN presented its value propositions in various fields of technology:

  • Digital solutions for tomorrow’s industry – Industrial Controls, Machine Learning, Analytics and Robotics
  • Solutions for sustainable transportation (trains, cars, aircraft) – Magnets Superconductivity and Cryogenics
  • Material science – High-Performance Applications in Harsh Environments

Anna Hall, Director Big Science Sweden, was pleased to see such great interest in the event.

“The day was packed with interesting discussions, and participants from both companies and CERN were enthusiastic about extending collaboration. We’re now following up various technology tracks, and looking to see how we can set up collaborations between CERN and Swedish industry.

“What’s exciting about CERN is that they haven’t just solved difficult problems; they’ve also industrialised and implemented the solutions in their very advanced production facility. CERN also has insights concerning the roadmap for future technologies and their development. This is interesting for industry, both in terms of technology choices and in solving future challenges.”

Inspiring collaboration projects

There are three main forms of collaboration between CERN and companies: R&D collaborations through industrial doctoral students or co-funded fellowships, procurement of consultant hours with in-depth technical expertise in various areas, and licensing of technology.

We heard about inspiring collaboration projects between different companies and CERN. For example, CERN and the Swedish company Zenceact (former Zenuity) have teamed up on fast machine learning for autonomous driving. Christoffer Petersson from Zenseact gave us an insight on their work to develop a software platform with innovative and self-driving features.

The collaboration programme between Big Science Sweden and the CERN Knowledge Transfer Group applies a challenge-driven approach, to identify strategic innovation challenges in Swedish companies and to match them with unique CERN know-how and technology.