Data Analysis for the Particle Accelerator

Organized by Isabel Dregely, Head of the Competence Field Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics, a hybrid guest lecture on the “Large Hadron Collider” (LHC) at the nuclear research center CERN took place on 27.09.2022.

Markus Friedl, Head of the Department of Electronics at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), was invited as a speaker under the title “Illuminati – Fiction & Facts”. He introduced his talk with a virtual tour of CERN. In his contribution, he addressed, among other things, superconducting magnets, the technologies involved at the nuclear research center, and the engineering services required for the particle accelerator.

Extreme Conditions for Sensor Technology

Superconducting magnets are high-tech products. The sensor technology and the data processing used in the LHC are enormously complex, but for the work at CERN they are quasi by-products. They are nevertheless relevant to industry, as they are tested and used in practice at extreme values in research at CERN. At the Institute for High Energy Physics, where Markus Friedl works at the ÖAW, work is being done on these sensors.

Incidentally, originally conceived as a hypertext system, the Internet was also created as such a “byproduct” at the Swiss research center more than 30 years ago.

Machine Learning and AI for Data Analysis

Each particle collision in the LHC produces so many measurable events that it is impossible to process all the data generated in the process. The decision about what information to collect is made by sensors. These have the appropriate “set of rules” to keep the data volumes in check. In recent years, CERN has increasingly used machine learning systems and artificial intelligence for data analysis, which are also used to simulate physical models.

With the curricula in the master’s programs AI Engineering or Data Science, the FHTW offers the best prerequisites for a professional activity in such a field of application. Experts in areas such as Big Data, Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence are in high demand in science and industry. Graduates of our university of applied sciences therefore have excellent job opportunities due to their expertise.