Brazil becomes an Associate Member State of Cern – 03/22/2024 – Science

Brazil became an Associate Member State of Cern (European center for particle physics), in Europe. It is the first country in the Americas to join the project.

The accession was announced by Cern itself, this Friday (22), and the status of Associate Member State took place on the 13th of this month, according to the center.

With the new status, the country will be able to appoint representatives to the center’s council and financial committee meetings. In addition, Brazilians can now apply for positions and programs at Cern. Finally, the possibility also opens up for national industry to compete for contracts from the center.

Despite the novelty, cooperation between Brazil and Cern has been going on for a long time. As the center itself indicates, the beginning of the partnership dates back to 1990, with the signing of an International Cooperation Agreement that allowed the involvement of Brazilian scientists in the Delphi experiment.

According to Cern, Brazilian institutes are currently present in all the main experiments at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) and there are around 200 scientists, engineers and students from Brazil working on the experiments.

The center also cites Cnpem (National Center for Research in Energy and Materials) as a cooperation partner, since 2020, in research and development of particle acceleration technologies and their applications.

“Brazil’s accession to CERN represents a significant milestone in strengthening international scientific cooperation and the development of science and cutting-edge technologies in the country”, says, in a note, the MCTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations).

The ministry points out that, as of the agreement, “Brazilian scientists now have priority access to CERN facilities, as well as work positions, courses and scientific internships offered.”

MCTI also says that the status achieved deepens cooperation with Sirius, the national particle accelerator.

According to Pasta, because of the new position, Brazil will need to pay 10 million Swiss francs (around R$58 million) per year.

It is worth mentioning that the agreement signed for Brazilian accession was approved by the National Congress on November 29th. The decree promulgating the agreement dates from March 12 of this year, with publication in the Official Gazette of the Union.