2021-2022

During the 2021/2022 term, The Nine provided documents on the following topics to the Director-General:

• Non-Disclosure Agreements: as concern had been expressed to us that such agreements prevent CERN sharing knowledge with our colleagues in other institutes. We concluded that NDAs are seen as a “necessary evil” to ensure the cooperation of industrial partners and that there are often ways to ensure knowledge is shared with colleagues who need the information.
• Leadership Training for Users: highlighting the need for the CERN User community to have appropriate training in lateral leadership (i.e. without significant hierarchical authority) and suggesting ways in which this could be provided and organized centrally by CERN.
• 3&4) Industrial Return for Member States and HR Return for Member States: topics suggested by the Director-General given that improving return to Member States in these areas is an objective for the 2021-2025 Directorate. In general we considered that, respectively, the IPT and HR Departments, have a good grasp of the issues and are addressing them, although we did make some suggestions for directions to follow. In the Industrial-Return area though, it is important to remember that we as Senior Staff can act to improve return to poorly-balanced Member States by ensuring that purchase procedures we supervise are open to companies from these countries.
• Further Thoughts on Return for Member States or “Physics Return”: an extension of 3&4) and a follow-up to a previous Nine topic (in 2020) on the perception of CERN in the Member States. We suggested that metrics are established to measure the engagement of the national research communities with CERN and its scientific programme, and highlighted the need for CERN to ensure that skills in technologies such as magnet and detector design are maintained and further developed not just here but in Member-State institutes and national laboratories.