At the Interuniversity Institute for High Energies (IIHE) on the VUB campus in Brussels, Belgian physicists, engineers, and technicians are working on one of today’s most ambitious scientific endeavours: the upgrade of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of the world’s largest particle detectors located at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Last month, Secretary-General Johan Hanssens and Policy Advisor Rita Hauchecorne (Department of WEWIS) visited the IIHE at VUB. The visit focused on the progress of a landmark international infrastructure project: “Silicon Tracker Endcap for the upgraded CMS experiment at the High-Luminosity LHC at CERN.”
Academic excellence meets high-tech assembly
This project is a masterclass in interuniversity collaboration. A team of 40 specialists from five Belgian universities (VUB, ULB, UCLouvain, UAntwerpen, and UGent) are currently working in a specialised Brussels cleanroom to produce 1,600 silicon modules.
These modules are the "eyes" of the detector, designed to withstand the extreme radiation and data loads expected when the LHC resumes operations in 2030 with a five-fold increase in collision rates.
Funding and impact
Supported by over €12 million in joint funding from the Flemish and Walloon governments (via WEWIS, FWO, and FNRS), this project reaffirms Belgium’s status as a leader in science and precision engineering.
The production phase in Brussels will continue until 2027, before the components move to Louvain-la-Neuve for final integration and eventual installation at CERN in 2028. This work continues a proud Belgian tradition that contributed to the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.