India joins CERN as an Associate Member

India on 21 November 2016 became an Associate Member State of European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) by signing an agreement with the organisation. 
●    The participation of Indian scientists in CERN dates back to early 1960s and it became stronger with the support of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Department of Science and Technology (DST). 
●    In 1991, DAE signed a formal agreement with CERN which exists till today. 
●    In 2003, India was awarded the Observer status of CERN and was subsequently invited to join CERN as an Associate Member
●    India made significant contributions to the construction of Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in the areas of design, development and supply of hardware accelerator systems and its commissioning. 
●    India is also one of the leading partners in the ALICE experiment which is about to unearth the physics of quark-gluon plasma (QGP).
●    Indian scientists played a very important role in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments, which is one of the two large experiments that have led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson.