An interuniversity team of 40 Belgian scientists has begun production of these parts, which will be incorporated into the new version of CMS, one of CERN's two major particle detectors. Its mission is a major one: to build 1,600 high-precision modules in 2 years!

In a clean room at the Interuniversity Institute for High Energies (IIHE-ULB/VUB) in Brussels, the first modules have already seen the light of day. They are the fruit of collaboration between researchers, physicists and engineers from ULB, VUB, UCLouvain, UGent and UAntwerpen. These Belgian universities have been asked to design and build one of the components of the new trajectograph that will be integrated into the new-generation CMS and will be capable of detecting the trajectories of thousands of particles produced by collision, 40 million times per second. 

In addition to this mission, the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) and the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek - Vlaanderen (FWO) have provided substantial support, allocating a total of over €12 million to upgrade the CMS experiment.

See the press release...