CERN Becomes User of State Data Center in Kragujevac

Minister of Information and Telecommunications Mihailo Jovanovic, Minister of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Jelena Begovic and Head of the Information Technology Department of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Enrica Porkari signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in introduction and exploitation of the Global LHC computer network in the State Data Center in Kragujevac on December 9.

By signing this Memorandum, Serbia becomes part of the Global Computer Network of CERN, i.e., a hub will be established in the State Data Centre in Kragujevac for the storage, processing and analysis of scientific data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Jovanovic said, as announced on the website of the Government of Serbia.

He explained that, that way, Serbia became one of the seven countries in Europe and the tenth country in the world that are part of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), where primary data from the physical experiments at CERN are processed and from where the data are further made available to the global scientific community.

According to him, it is also an opportunity to develop and profile experts within the scientific community in Serbia who will work with nuclear research data and have the opportunity to collaborate with around 5,500 scientists from 240 institutes from 54 countries around the world.

The minister reminded that the State Data Center in Kragujevac had the certificate, according to the EN50600 standard for fulfilling the highest level of the reliability, safety and efficiency of the storage of equipment and data – the class 4 certificate.

After some of the biggest global IT giants, such as Oracle, IBM, and Huawei, reached the decision to store their equipment and data on a commercial basis in Kragujevac, CERN has now also become a user of the State Data Center – an icon of sorts of digitization in Serbia, Jovanovic pointed out.

Begovic said that it was a great day for Serbia and its scientists, since the country was becoming one of the few countries that would store and process data from world experiments in which thousands of the world's best scientists participated.

– We will be part of the information support for the experiments taking place at CERN – Begovic underlined and added that the State Data Centre would become a "Tier-1" center of CERN and enable the expansion of capacities in terms of storing, processing and analyzing data generated during experiments in CERN.

She pointed out that, in addition to directly becoming part of the research process, Serbia’s IT experts would get new knowledge regarding the management of a complex information system, enabling Serbia to get a new generation of experts, able to apply the knowledge in other fields of science as well.

Porkari pointed out that, since 2019, when Serbia joined CERN, many steps had been taken towards strengthening partnerships between scientists and engineers from Serbia and CERN, adding that they saw many areas where progress had been made.

She believes that the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding is another step in the strengthening of this cooperation and that they are glad that they will welcome Serbia to the WLCG and that our country will be a gathering place for the keeping of scientific data for both the Serbian science community and the global one.

Vlada Republike Srbije

Ministarstvo informisanja i telekomunikacija Republike Srbije

Ministarstvo nauke, tehnološkog razvoja i inovacija Republike Srbije

Information Technology Department of the European Organization for Nuclear Research

CERN

State Data Center Kragujevac

Mihailo Jovanović

Jelena Begović

Enrica Porkari

Worldwide LHC Computing Grid

WLCG