The 14th Collaboration Meeting took place in Genoa, Italy, from 7th-10th October 2024 and brought together nearly 200 participants from across the project, from both CERN and the Project’s collaborators.
Organised by INFN and CERN, the talks and discussions took place largely in buildings and lecture rooms at the Faculty of Architecture (DAD) in Genoa. The venue and city offered a beautiful setting for taking stock of the progress made by the project and its international partners over the past year and having fruitful discussions about the next steps in preparation for the deployment of the HL-LHC project in the LHC tunnel, now set to start in July 2026.
Oliver Brüning, HL-LHC Project Leader, comments on the outcome of this year’s edition: “As we are reaching the end of the LHC Run3 period, the HL-LHC project is getting ready for the start of Long Shutdown 3. It was great to see at the 2024 Collaboration meeting in Genoa that all work packages of the project have by now fully engaged in the series production and validation of components. The project is well on track for starting the installation work in 2026.”
Amongst project progress showcased in this edition were the contributions of INFN and ASG, namely the successful production and validation of the first series D2 magnets, produced by ASG in Genoa as an in-kind contribution by INFN (Italy), and the completion of production of the MgB2 wires for the superconducting link by ASG. Despite an orange weather warning closing all public buildings in Genoa on Tuesday 8th October, we were still able to take a very well organised and interesting tour of ASG’s facilities to see their work first-hand, as well as to arrange an in-person Collaboration Board meeting in a nearby hotel.
We also updated collaborators on the latest LS3 schedule changes and looked at the advancement of series production of project components, of transitions from prototype validation to series production, and of the IT String test stand installation which recently completed the installation of the cold powering system and the first quadrupole magnet.
We would like to especially thank Andrea Bersani, Barbara Caiffi, Mirko Corosu, Stefania Farinon, Filippo Levi, Alessandra Pampaloni, Marco Statera and the whole team at INFN who worked closely with CERN’s Cecile Noels and Alessia Valenza to organise such a productive and memorable meeting. We would also like to thank all speakers and attendees for their participation, engagement and constructive discussions, which often continued beyond formal meetings, over dinner or a drink in the beautiful Old Town of Genoa.
By Florence Thompson