CERN’s General Director Dr. Fabiola Gianotti and Minister of Education and Science Krasimir Valchev opened the exhibition “Bulgaria 20 years in CERN”.
It is located in the Incubator building of Sofia Tech Park and will be open until November 28. The program also includes lectures on current topics from CERN’s extensive research in basic research and their applications.

The exposition is organized by the Ministry of Education and Science, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”and BAS, in partnership and household with Sofia Tech Park. It is dedicated to the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Bulgaria’s full membership in the organization, the present and future of CERN, the Bulgarian presence in the various research and educational programs and the new perspectives for scientific cooperation and technological transfer to the Bulgarian research institutions and the Bulgarian business.
«120 international scientists and nearly 40 Bulgarian companies actively participate in the international laboratory. Over 720 teachers and over 4000 students have visited the organization”, said the Minister of Education and Science Krasimir Valchev. “CERN tells us that fundamental science must be international, we cannot make big breakthroughs ourselves. That is why we stimulate pan-European structures, we participate in more and more of them “, Valchev commented, adding that one of the biggest benefits of Bulgaria’s participation in CERN is that Bulgarian scientists have the opportunity to participate in the largest scientific projects in the world.
“It is an honor for me to be at the exhibition because our partnership with Bulgaria is very good”, said CERN CEO Fabiola Gianotti. She noted that the partnership is developing in several key CERN areas, with a number of companies playing an important role with which the organization partnered to develop new technologies. Gianotti pointed out that Bulgaria has for years played a political and social role in forming joint initiatives around the world. CERN is an outstanding example of scientific cooperation, because the organization works with 18,000 scientists from over 100 nationalities, and Bulgaria participates in scientific experiments at CERN with about 100 distinguished scientists.

“It is a pleasure for us to have the opportunity to partner with CERN in recent years”, said Natanail Stefanov, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Sofia Tech Park, at the opening. He pointed out that Sofia Tech Park was involved in the development of the project for the Center for Hadron Therapy, which grew into a research institute for the Western Balkans, whose natural place could be in Sofia Tech Park.
The Science and Technology Park is communicating with the international laboratory about including the park in the CERN Incubation Program, as Bulgarian companies can get the opportunity to develop innovations and inventions of the laboratory. Stefanov explained that the supercomputer center under construction in Sofia could be included in the system for storing and processing data from CERN’s research and their practical interpretation.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Bulgaria’s accession to the European Laboratory for Particulate Physics (CERN). Today, CERN has 23 member states (Bulgaria is the 20th of them), 8 associate members and protocols for cooperation with 40 other countries, 23 000 permanent associates, over 1,000 scholars and nearly 13,000 associate researchers from over 100 nationalities around the world.
The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) project has made CERN a global leader in particle physics. The first phase of the collider’s experiments was crowned with the discovery of a half-century-old Higgs boson, which was the only missing element in the Standard Elemental Particle Model.
CERN also develops a number of educational programs, supports the Open Access Initiative, and the World Wide Web created in it has irreversibly changed the development of human civilization.
On June 3, 1999, the XXXVIII National Assembly ratified the CERN Convention and on June 11, 1999 Bulgaria was officially declared as a full member of CERN by UNESCO. Bulgarian scientists, engineers and technicians from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski ”, Institute of Nuclear Sciences of BAS and the University of Plovdiv Paisii Hilendarski” and NCRP are actively participating in the scientific researches carried out in the organization, contributing significantly to many new results for the structure of the universe.