United Nations University (UNU)

CERN contact

M. Bona

    Main ongoing collaborations between CERN and UNU

    Due to the “distributed structure” of UNU, CERN’s main interactions are with several UNU institutes: UNU Centre in Tokyo (capacity-building programme and online learning); UNU International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST) in Macau;  UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research and Training Centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), and the Global Virtual University (GVU), a joint programme of UNU with GRID-Arendal (the latter is an institution associated to UNU).

    Main past collaborations

    2006: Signature of a CERN-UNU collaboration agreement.
    2006: International Workshop on African Research and Education Network. 2005: CERN participation in the African University Network (AFUNET) project

The United Nations University (UNU) operates under the joint sponsorship of the United Nations and UNESCO, through a central programming and co-ordinating body and a network of research and post-graduate training centres and programmes located in developed and developing Countries. Its headquarter is in Tokyo, Japan.

UNU devotes its work to research into the pressing global problems of human survival, development and welfare that are the concern of the United Nations and its agencies, with due attention to the social sciences and the humanities as well as natural sciences, pure and applied.

Collaboration between CERN and UNU started in 2005 in the framework of the African University Network (AFUNET) project, and was consolidated with an International Workshop on African Research and Education Network held at CERN in September 2006.

In 2006 CERN and UNU signed a collaboration Agreement focused on the use of the internet, information and software technologies, for academic research and networking with a particular emphasis on supporting young scientists in the developing world.

The two Organizations also agreed to promote the principles of open access, open educational resources, digital libraries and e-libraries.