Organisation and management

 

As it requires the implementation of very large, dedicated instruments that are both complex and costly (like accelerators and detectors), the research conducted at IN2P3 is unlike that performed in many other scientific fields in that it can only occur through very large research collaborations (or projects).
At the very least nationwide, nowadays these collaborations are most often on a European or global scale, organised around increasingly sophisticated instruments and shared by an ever wider community originating from laboratories located throughout the world. They are notably conducted with respect to accelerators situated at CERN (Geneva), at Ganil (France), at Slac (Stanford, USA), at Fnal (USA) and at Desy (Germany).

 

Large laboratories

As the experiments require significant investments in terms of financing and personnel, from the outset the Institute took the structure of a limited number of large laboratories and Infrastructures or technological platforms in order to facilitate the pooling and optimisation of its resources and competencies. Several of its laboratories are, generally speaking, directly involved in each of the collaborations in which it participates. As the implementation of the experiments involves sharing of the tasks and constant exchanges within the collaborations, these laboratories work together, permanent interacting with each other and with other CNRS and CEA (Irfu) laboratories and foreign institutes or universities.

Search committees, committees in charge of finding new directors for the Institute’s laboratories, have been put in place in order to enable the laboratory directors to be appointed with complete transparency, notably after consulting the laboratory personnel, the National committee commissions concerned and supervision bodies.

 

Project-specific management

Very early on, IN2P3 developed a methodology for conducting projects, based on standards and texts of international scope. The coordination with the CEA’s Irfu (Research institute on the fundamental laws of the Universe), the implementation of rules for the application of organic law on finance laws (Lolf), and the new operating methods for European research, have led the Institute to put in place institutional project-specific management, which brings together the laboratory management teams, all of the Institute’s projects and the latter’s management team.