Morocco Joins CERN as Associate, Boosts Nuclear Research Capabilities

After several months of exchanges with its Digitalization & Microelectronics Smart Devices center, the ATLAS international collaboration has co-opted the MAScIR foundation into its ranks, following a unanimous vote by the 180 member institutes from 38 different countries, MAScIR said in a statement. The foundation is thus joining the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as an Associated Technical Institute. Its mission will be to contribute to the HGTD (High Granularity Timing Detector) project aimed at improving the performance of the Atlas detector.

This detector, as well as other detectors placed at different locations of the 27-kilometer particle accelerator (LHC: Large Hadron Collider), are located in the border region between France and Switzerland, the same source points out, stressing that the LHC represents the largest and most complex scientific instrument in the world, having notably confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson in 2012. "It allows to explore the fundamental nature of our Universe and the search for dark matter," adds MAScIR.

Specifically, the Foundation will make its expertise in microelectronics available to CERN and participate in the design of microelectronic readout cards meeting very severe constraints in terms of size and radiation resistance. Similarly, MAScIR will work on the optimization and design of a HGTD prototype with a view to participating in the assembly and installation of a part of this detector, the statement continues.