By Bonnie James

Prof Ilham al-Qaradawi and Dr Siham al-Qaradawi

Qatar’s proposed participation in a much-anticipated experiment at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, will raise the scientific profile of the country, CERN’s senior scientist Dr Lars Jorgensen has said.
“Qatar University’s collaboration with CERN in the AEGIS (Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy) is also bound to raise the profile of science and technology in Qatar and be an inspiration to students to study the natural sciences,” he predicted.
QU’s physics professor Ilham Y al-Qaradawi was of the view that the tie-up with CERN could emphasise the importance of science, particularly programmes in physics which has very few students enrolling now.
“By showing that science and physics can go into very exciting and very high level of experiments and research it will look much more attractive to students to pursue this career path,” she hoped.
Prof Jorgensen elaborated that the idea of the collaboration is also to have students and faculty from Qatar to come to CERN and to work on the things.
“This will be a tremendous experience to come and work at technology at the forefront of research today at CERN, not just in physics, but also in computer science and engineering related subjects,” he stated.
CERN also runs programmes for students from high school, who along with  teachers could visit CERN for a couple of weeks to learn about and feel what it is like at a world class science lab.
Prof al-Qaradawi recalled that for three summers her department sent students to CERN, where they have lectures in the morning and can join one of the experiments in the afternoon.
“In 2007 we sent about seven students to a summer programme, last year also we sent six students, and a teacher to the teachers programme, this year there were two students, and a teacher,” she said while stating that this will continue in the coming years too.
Another speciality of CERN, as Dr Jorgensen pointed out, is that the research could result in some ‘accidental spin-offs.’
“One of the ‘accidents’ is that CERN invented the World Wide Web without even trying, and also lots of detector technology in use now in medical science originated at CERN,” he reminded.
QU’s College of Arts and Sciences dean Dr Siham Yousef al-Qaradawi also expressed the hope that the advanced research that the university is set to pursue with CERN would lure more students to the science programmes.