13-03-2009: CERN launches new youth site on Web's 20th anniversary

13 maart 2009
Geneva, 13 March 2009. Web veteran Robert Cailliau today launched
CERNland, a new website for young people, on the occasion of the Web's
20th anniversary. CERNland has been developed to bring the excitement of
CERN*'s research to a young audience aged 7 to 12 through a range of
films, games and multimedia applications. It is available at
http://www.cern.ch/cernland.

"I've been involved with CERNland from the start," said Cailliau, "and
it's great to see CERN using the Web to reach out to a young audience."

As the first collaborator of Web-inventor Tim Berners-Lee on his fledgling
project 20 years ago, Cailliau has also been involved with the Web from
the start. While Berners-Lee developed the technology of the Web, Cailliau
spread the word, first at CERN and then further afield.

Young people are an important audience for CERN. There is increasing
demand for a physics-literate graduate population, coupled with falling
enrolment in physics courses at the university level.

"Society needs more physicists across a range of industries," said CERN
Director General Rolf Heuer, "and the way to attract young people in to
physics is to engage them early with the kind of discovery-science we do
here at CERN, addressing some of the most fundamental questions about our
Universe."

CERNland has been developed with the help of professional educators, and
assisted by some of the young people it's been designed to reach. Their
input has been incorporated into the site's design.

"It was highly rewarding to let a group of students loose on CERNland,"
said the Director General. "It was amazing to see how easily they engaged,
and how quickly they learned."

Further information:
James Gillies
Phone: + 41 22 767 4101
Email: Press.Office@cern.ch

*CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's
leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in
Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the
Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy,
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian
Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission
and UNESCO have Observer status.