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Indian students, institutions will benefit from CERN: Dr Prfaulla Kumar Behera

India has become an associate member of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

India has become an associate member of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest nuclear and particle physics laboratory. The laboratory became famous after finding the elusive Higgs Boson particle in 2012.

The membership which costs over Rs 75 crore annually also providing new opportunities. In an exclusive chat, Dr Prfaulla Kumar Behera, former CERN scientist and now an associate professor in IIT Madras, spoke to A. Ragu Raman from Deccan Chronicle on how it can be useful to students, educational institutions and country. Excerpts:-

How will it help Indian higher education institutions like IIT Madras?

So far we are linked to CERN through the CNS experiment. Now, after India becoming the associate member we have the direct connection with CERN. It will allow students to do project in CERN directly. Our companies can now bid for engineering contracts. It will also help us with new cutting edge technologies in various fields.

IIT Madras is collaborating with the CNS experiment in CERN for the last two years. What are the significant contributions you have made so far?

We are making sure the detector is running continuously and at the same time physics output is also coming out. We do high levels trigger validation for electron and photon, Higgs Monte Carlo production for exotic Higgs particle and silicon detector calibration. CNS is planning to upgrade its silicon tracking detector in 2025. We can significantly contribute towards high-tech mechanics.

After Higgs Boson what the detectors are looking at CERN?

We are looking for supersymmetry particle. If the supersymmetry theory is correct we should find the new bunch of particle. We are also looking for the signature of the dark matter. There is absolutely no signature. We found another particle last year. People are excited as this may be another Higgs.

World Wide Web was invented at CERN. What is the next important technology we can expect out of CERN?

I think grid computing is the next big technology to emerge from labs of CERN. It will allow us to use resources from other countries when they are not using it. This may be the next big revolution in technology. If you want to use huge data which is not storable in one country, then, the data has to be split among the countries. You can have access to larger volumes of data by using this method. It can handle thousands of beta bytes.

How can we use this associate membership for our country’s good?

Our premier engineering institutes like IITs and NITs responsibility has increased now. It will provide us new opportunities, which can be exploited to develop new cutting-edge technologies. We have to make a consortium of IITs, which have capacities in their relevant areas and approach CERN with proposals. It will surely be beneficial for Indian educational institutions and industry.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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