r/CERN

Hi! I am a fellow at CERN. I have just viewed the salary payment slip, and it shows 1000 CHF as "bonus". Do you know what it may be?

Has anyone gotten any updates on the research fellowship? Based on previous post, it was told today is when the committee convenes for selection.

Hey there,

As the title suggests, I would like to know why candidates holding a PhD cannot apply to engineering positions at CERN.

I have a double master's degree in HSE/Risk Management and Nuclear Physics, and I am thinking about doing a PhD just for the unique research experience and personal development it offers. Nothing more.

I don't plan to work in research after that but simply work as an engineer, most likely in HSE or any related safety role in a nuclear environment, depending on the available opportunities.

Why wouldn't it be possible?

Last year, I completed a 5 months Short-Term Internship at the ATLAS Safety Office and really enjoyed my time there. I even got a recommendation letter from my tutors. Therefore, I would genuinely be interested in returning and working at CERN in a related position.

Any explanation, insight or advice from staff or collaborators would be really appreciated.
Thanks for reading me :)

I am writing to report what appears to be a persistent failure of Zenodo's usage statistics pipeline following the service incident on May 15, 2026 (the brief incident reported between 12:25–13:11 GMT). The user-facing outage was resolved, but the statistics pipeline downstream of it appears to have stopped recording new views and downloads — and remains broken five days later.

The break point is approximately May 14, 2026. Records published from May 14 onward are showing 0 views and 0 downloads on the 'This version' counter regardless of actual traffic, and the 'All versions' cumulative counter on multi-version records has not advanced since that date.

Evidence:

1. Robert Koch-Institut, 'COVID-19-Hospitalisierungen in Deutschland,' Version 2026-05-15 (record ID 20196436, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20196436): 0 views / 0 downloads on the 'This version' counter, five days after publication. The May 13 version of the same record accumulated 59 views in its one-day window before being superseded. This dataset is one of the most heavily-trafficked open datasets on Zenodo, mirrored to GitHub, indexed by OpenAIRE, and scraped continuously by automated pipelines. A reading of zero downloads over five days is not physically plausible.

2. The same record's 'All versions' cumulative counter has been static at 139,919 views / 113,402 downloads from the May 6 version through today's May 19 version. Six daily releases have produced zero incremental views or downloads. This is not consistent with normal traffic.

3. I have personally tested by clicking through to one of my own records (10.5281/zenodo.20260464) from a separate device on a different network and downloading the PDF. After 24 hours, the counter remains at 0/0 on both 'This version' and 'All versions.'

4. The service incident banner that previously stated 'we will provide more details in the following days' has been removed from the Zenodo homepage without the promised follow-up explanation.

Questions:

• Can you confirm the current status of the statistics aggregation pipeline?

- Is there an estimated timeline for restoration?

- If raw access logs were preserved during the affected window, is backfill of missing views/downloads planned, or will this period be permanently uncounted?

- Is there an updated post-incident report planned, given that the original banner promised one?

I would appreciate confirmation that this issue is being tracked. I have additional record IDs and timestamps available if useful for diagnostics.

Thank you for your time.

David Snider

I want to ask these questions to any current contract employees on this sub.

1. How did you all get the job?

2. What did your academic/professional background look like when you got the job offer?

3. Is there a real shot for a non-EU foreign national to land a contract role?

There are several open roles on the website that I am interested in and am qualified for. I am concerned that my online applications would go into the void like they often do here in the US. I am very new to this so I appreciate any tips that would help me land an interview.

Here is my background:

Master's degree in mechanical engineering with thesis

3 years of industry experience in R&D in various domains

No patents as of yet

Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone, I'm currently a fellow at CERN and my contract is expiring soon. I was wondering whether anyone here knows what happens to your UBS account once your CERN contract ends. In particular, I'd like to understand, first, how long the account remains active after contract expiration and, second, what the conditions are for keeping the account once you are no longer affiliated with the organization and return to your home country. Unfortunately, I'm not currently at CERN right now, so I can't visit the UBS desk on-site, and I haven't been able to reach them by phone ... Any advice or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Has anyone else still not heard back from CERN Technical Studentship 2026-2?
I’m trying to understand whether silence in mid-May usually means rejection or whether some departments contact later.

If anyone already had an interview (especially for Maths/IT/Computing/AI-related projects), I’d really appreciate if you could give me a shout or DM me — I’d love to hear a bit about your experience/process.

I currently work at CERN, and while I’m proud of that, I have to be honest, it’s not always what I expected. I wanted to write this post to talk about things that really bother me and that I think deserve more attention. There are so many posts out there saying it’s the best experience of their lives, and that if it isn’t yours, you just “got unlucky.” I don’t really buy that. From what I see and live through on a daily basis, a lot of what I’m about to describe isn’t rare at all. So I’m sharing this for anyone going through similar things and feeling like they’re the only one. Here’s what I observe:

Nepotism: This is probably the biggest problem. It creates these clusters of teams built around shared universities, shared nationalities. Diversity should matter a lot at a place like CERN, which is funded by so many different countries. And it’s not just about hiring. Promotions too. I watch people move up while others, who clearly work harder and contribute more to meaningful projects, get left behind because they are not friend with the right person. Every year we’re asked to recruit more people from certain nationalities, but no one is ever held to it and when it does happen, those people usually end up in the most temporary, low-stakes positions, like student roles.

Permanent staff who does not work: Honestly, it’s kind of predictable. When you’re essentially impossible to fire, there’s not much pressure to stay engaged. That’s what I see around me every day.

Student projects that just die: This one genuinely frustrates me. Money and time go into a student working on something with real potential, and then they leave and nobody picks it up. I get that students are under time pressure and can’t always finish, but why does the work just get buried? Why doesn’t anyone continue it?

No documentation: Barely anything is written down. “Documentation” usually means one person who’s been working on a something forever and has everything stored in their head. The moment they’re not around, you’re stuck.

Supervisors who supervise nothing: The title exists mostly on paper. As a supervisor, there’s genuinely no incentive to do the job properly other than just being a decent person. Letting a student figure things out on their own has zero consequences for you, so why bother? It’s just extra work with nothing in return. And yet those same supervisors still end up credited on every piece of work the student produces.

Homophobia and sexism: I’m not personally targeted, but I see it in my own team and hear plenty from others. Sexist and homophobic jokes are just normal. The kind of thing where struggling with a task becomes an excuse to call someone gay. Women have their work constantly questioned, downplayed, or taken credit for by their supervisors. Friends from other teams have told me directly that they’re experiencing what I’d call sexual harassment, that they’ve reported it to HR, and that nothing comes of it, no consequences, no changes. At an organization of this level, that’s not just disappointing, it’s unacceptable. I hope what I’m seeing is the exception but I’m not convinced it is.

I know some people will not like this post because they love their time at CERN or have a completely different experience. That’s fine. But what I’m describing is real, it happens more than people admit, and CERN doesn’t seem particularly interested in fixing it.

Hello everyone,

I’m writing this partly to vent and also because I’d love to hear your opinions or experiences.

I recently found out that I was selected to work at CERN, and every time I think about it, it still feels surreal. I only applied once, and somehow I managed to pass every interview stage on my first try. My life until now was basically working in my hometown, and suddenly I’m about to move abroad and work at one of the most prestigious laboratories in the world.

My studies are not completely related to the position I got, so it’s hard not to feel a bit of imposter syndrome sometimes. I also get overwhelmed thinking about the fact that neither French nor English are my native languages, and I’m not fully confident with my English because I’m not used to speaking it constantly.

But at the same time, I also get these bursts of excitement and a huge desire to learn, and deep down I feel like everything will probably turn out okay.

Has anyone else gone through something similar? How did you experience it? I’d really love to hear your stories and how things turned out for you, and how you managed to overcome those feelings.

Hi

I'll be joining for a short term internship from June until october this year. Does anyone know a place where an e-bike could be rented on a monthly/weekly basis? I'll be living in Thoiry and commuting by bike.

Hi guys. Not 100% sure how this works and while I have read this guide https://admin-eguide.web.cern.ch/en/procedure/swiss-cards, I do have a question on top of mind that I am hoping someone will be able to address. Can I use my Swiss card to apply for a working permit in Switzerland, or is my Swiss Card only bound to CERN related purposes? Am I right in saying that if I apply to a local shop, they wouldn't be able to accept me because I do not hold a standard work permit?

TIA!

Question from the title. Do you guys get an email from your team lead informing you you're their first pick before official offer? Does every lead do that?

I'm reading some comments here saying they got notified already, so I'm a little worried.

I want to ask the following question to all the scientists at CERN: Here it is: If the world ended in 2012, as conspiracy theories claim, the real question is how did it end? And how did they manage to take people to a supposed simulation?

And the big question is, what was the purpose, what was the goal, and how did they do it? And why couldn't the others be saved or migrate to the simulation? And how did they manage to make consciousness jump from universe to universe? 🤔 I hope you can answer this question for me because: I've seen several conspiracy theories, and I love science.

And I really don't believe in them; I find those conspiracy theories silly and absurd. But I still have this question. And by the way, how can I join CERN? And how much do they pay to work there, and can I participate and learn with you?

Is there still a chance for applicants to receive interview calls for the CERN Technical Studentship 2026-2 between May 10 and May 20, or have most interviews already been completed by now?

Hey everyone!

I had an interview with a team, and they confirmed I am their final choice and asked me to join. I agreed and my future boss submitted that information along to her supervisor.

Now we're waiting for the administrative/bureaucratic/HR procedure, before getting a contract to sign on June 4th.

What's the chance some problem crops up in this procedure before getting the final contract? Is it possible HR/committee rejects them from getting a technical student in general, or me in specific?

How certain can I be I actually have a firm offer? A month is a long time to wait if you have other standing offers.

Thanks in advance!

Hi all, I've been a technical student at CERN for a bit over 3 months now and it's been a great time. I am loving working there and am happy living in Geneva. However with all of this I know that as a technical student I am effectively on borrowed time, how realistic is it to stay on after student contract ends either by jumping to a PhD and hopefully being able to get a doctoral student contract or jumping to a fellow contract. I get the impression that the chances are pretty dim.

This is what I found on the CERN website

https://preview.redd.it/msj5ktbpkxzg1.png?width=1482&format=png&auto=webp&s=b46ac17ed5b079039415a6d28ba112f6a3acf07d

My question is about the "experience since graduation" part. Does this mean only the years of work experience after graduating from the Master's degree or does this include all your years of experience, even the time before your Master's degree, that is the work experience after your Bachelor's degree for example?

Let's say I have 5.5 years of experience in total, out of which 2.5 years was before my Master's degree and 3 years was after my Master's degree, which bracket would I qualify for?