Above: CERN and CMS delegations received by Ms Ana Brnabić the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia. (Image: Serbian Ministry of Information and Telecommunications)
On December 9, 2023. CERN and the Republic of Serbia signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Collaboration in the Deployment and Exploitation of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid for establishing a Tier-1 computing centre in Serbia to support the CMS experiment. The CERN delegation (Enrica Porcari and Simone Campana) and CMS delegation (Lucia Silvestris, Elisabeth Sexton Kennedy, James Letts, and Vladimir Reković) travelled to Serbia for the signing ceremony where they were received by Ms Ana Brnabić, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia, Dr Jelena Begović, Serbian Minister of Science, Technological Development and Innovation, and Dr Mihailo Jovanović, Serbian Minister of Information and Telecommunications. The parties discussed the importance of the scientific research, opportunities for cooperation and commitment to securing support for future collaboration.
“The signature of this MoU today is a testimony to the vision and strong commitment of the Serbian government and the Serbian scientific community towards the CERN research programme, and vice versa. We are impressed by the computing infrastructure that Serbia is making available to the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, and, in particular, to the CMS collaboration. This is an important step for Serbia towards becoming a valued member of the network of highly performant data centres that provide the computing resources needed to store, process, and analyse the data gathered by the LHC experiments. I am sure that this MoU will consolidate even further the longstanding relationship between CERN and Serbia and will contribute to realising our common vision to become a springboard for scientific collaboration here and worldwide. CERN continues to be committed to the co-development and sharing of knowledge with its MoU partners in the spirit of scientific progress”, stated Enrica Porcari, the Head of IT Department at CERN.
Above: From left to right: Enrica Porcari, Head of CERN's IT department, Jelena Begović, Serbian Minister of Science, Technological Development and Innovation, and Mihailo Jovanović, Serbian Minister of Information and Telecommunications. (Image: Serbian Ministry of Information and Telecommunications)
The signing ceremony was held in the State Data Centre in Kragujevac (SDC-KG), the site of the future Serbian Tier-1 centre. Kragujevac is a city located 90 km south of Belgrade, and home to the oldest higher education institution in Serbia, nowadays the University of Kragujevac.
oldest higher education institution in Serbia, nowadays the University of Kragujevac.
The SDC-KG is the country’s state-of-the-art facility, operating successfully since 2020 and dedicated to providing safe data storage and data processing services to government, healthcare, education and research institutions, and commercial clients. The centre provides 2N redundant services, including power, cooling, and network connectivity, and has recently been awarded a certification of highest standard, EN 50600 Class 4.
Above: The State Data Center in Kragujevac, home of future Serbian Tier-1.
The construction and commissioning phase of the Serbian CMS Tier-1 centre is planned to be completed by the end of 2024, when a period of probation begins for the centre to be declared as a WLCG Tier-1 centre. This new Tier-1 will provide for approximately 15% of the CMS experiment’s computing and storage needs, which are expected to double by the start of the HL-LHC, and which will substantially contribute to the smooth operation of the experiment. Apart from providing services to CMS, the centre is expected to become a research platform attracting local talent from universities and research institutes from the country to further contribute to WLCG development and computing in HEP.
Serbian researchers have been contributing to the CMS experiment since 2001, currently comprising two CMS Institutes, Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences and Faculty of Physics, both from the University of Belgrade. The two groups are currently contributing to the HiLumi upgrade projects of Level-1 Trigger and the Barrel Electromagnetic Calorimeter respectively.