ABSTRACT

The European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) was founded by 12 European countries in 1954 as one of Europe's first joint ventures. CERN's primary mission is to perform world-class research in fundamental particle physics research and its laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva has both constructed and operated numerous ground-breaking particle accelerators and associated experiments throughout its 70-year history. Education and training, international collaboration, and technology development are also important complementing and facilitating parts of the organization's mission, and CERN is committed to identifying and making available opportunities for the dissemination and societal use of its results. In particular, the application of CERN's expertise and unique competencies in particle accelerators, detectors, and computing to the medical domain represents one of the most important opportunities in terms of potential impact on society. In this chapter, we describe CERN's experience and strategy within international engagement in the fields of particle and medical physics and summarize CERN's involvement in enhancing international collaborations for medical physicists.