General Application Questions: REU Program (see below for the RET Teacher program)

Duration, dates

Every year the program runs from the beginning of June (usually first week) to the beginning of August (usually second week). The applications usually open around October and both applications and reference letters are usually due early in January. (the 2025 application deadline will be January 03, 2025). We expect the program will run from June 7 through August 9, 2025, although this has not been confirmed by CERN.

Academic level and citizenship/residency requirement

The CERN REU is exclusively for students currently pursuing an undergraduate degree. Students from any university are welcome. We do not consider high school students. Due to limitations of our sponsor, we can not consider undergraduate students who are currently not U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Foreign students should check this page at CERN.

Project topics and project selection

There are new projects every summer.  Projects are distributed after admission and before arrival to CERN. Examples for previous projects can be found under the previous programs page. The project assigned to the student is usually based on what the student asks for, if admitted, in the application to CERN directly. This way the student is in the CERN summer student system and can be matched with an advisor and group based off what they inquire about. More information is listed on the admitted students information.

Recommendation letters

Please have two academic reference letter writers submit letters on your behalf.  In exceptional cases, if you believe that your academic letters are not sufficient and that a letter from a different person (high school, non-academic employment, coach, etc.) will give additional valuable information, you may add this letter.

Transcripts

In case your newest transcripts are not available at the time the application is due, please send us the latest version of the transcript you have.  You can always send us a newer version of the transcripts once it becomes available, but please make sure that we have the most current transcript you have by the time the application is due.  You can upload an un-official transcript when you apply, accepted students will be required to provide official transcripts.

CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is the world's leading laboratory for high energy research located in Geneva Switzerland.  There are ~10,000 scientists of ~600 institutions from ~100 countries currently doing their research at CERN.  Experimental particle physics requires advanced particle accelerators, experiments to use the beams from the accelerators, and increasingly sophisticated computing facilities to analyze the results.  Major breakthroughs in accelerator, detector and computing have been achieved at CERN since its establishment in 1954, among them the invention of the World Wide Web.  An introduction about CERN can be found by clicking here, the video introduction 'CERN in 3 minutes' can be found here.

Further information

Please do not hesitate to contact us at um-cern-reu@umich.edu for further information.

Selection and admissions

Selection will take place early in January.  Decisions will be announced at the latest at the end of February, both students who are selected and students who are not selected will be informed.  If you have not heard from us by the end of February please send an e-mail to um-cern-reu@umich.edu.

General Application Questions: Teacher Program

Information for the CERN High school teacher program for US participants is available on QuarkNET. Please contact Ken Cecire, Kenneth.W.Cecire.1@nd.edu, for further information. Additional information can also be found at http://hst.web.cern.ch. QuarkNET will release a program announcement shortly after the New Year.