On November 14, the city of Rio de Janeiro hosted the CLAF Symposium, organized by the Latin American Center for Physics (CLAF), an organization dedicated to strengthening regional scientific cooperation and promoting the exchange of knowledge regarding contemporary challenges in physics. The event brought together established researchers, institutional representatives, and Latin American research centers, fostering discussion on technological advances, talent development, and prospects for collaboration in the coming years. Founded in 1962 with the support of UNESCO, CLAF emerged following a series of Latin American Physics Schools that began in 1959 in Mexico and continued in Argentina and Brazil—initiatives that led figures such as Juan José Giambiagi, José Leite Lopes, and Marcos Moshinsky to advocate for the creation of a center dedicated to science in the region. Since then, CLAF has established itself as a key platform for training, academic mobility, and the integration of Latin American physics, promoting scholarship programs, scientific exchanges, and meeting spaces that have marked milestones in the history of the discipline.
Representing the SAPHIR Millennium Institute was Dr. Jilberto Zamora, a research associate at the Institute and a faculty member at CTEPP–UNAB. During his presentation, he provided a detailed overview of Chilean contributions to cutting-edge experiments conducted at CERN, highlighting the team’s progress on projects such as ATLAS, SND@LHC, NA-64, and SHiP. Zamora elaborated on SAPHIR’s role in implementing the new MOPS-HUB system for the ITk detector of the ATLAS experiment, whose production and quality control are carried out both at CERN laboratories and at facilities at Andrés Bello University in Chile, positioning the country as a leader in the development of specialized scientific hardware.
He also discussed the neutrino physics program through the SND@LHC experiment, in which the Chilean team designed and built the ColdBox—a structure lined with boronated polyethylene and acrylic to mitigate the neutrino flux—and is actively involved in data analysis, flux measurements, prototyping, and detector testing for future versions of the experiment.
He also presented the progress made on NA-64, an initiative dedicated to the search for dark photons, to which SAPHIR has contributed by building detectors, conducting simulations, developing an SRD system based on LYSO crystals, and designing a calibration platform capable of handling up to eight tons for the HCAL, featuring sub-millimeter precision and automated control.
Finally, Zamora emphasized that these contributions not only consolidate Chile’s presence in cutting-edge experiments but also boost national capabilities in research, engineering, and the training of new generations of scientists.
For his part, Jack Brady, Director of SAPHIR’s International Division, participated in the panel discussion “Chilean Participation and Association with CERN,” alongside Dr. Hayk Hakobyan, Deputy Director of CCTVal, and Rodrigo Pacheco, Executive Director of CCTVal. During the session, Brady highlighted the mechanisms that have enabled Chile to strengthen its participation in CERN, SAPHIR’s coordinating role in high-impact collaborative projects, and the need to enhance the national scientific infrastructure to consolidate a sustainable ecosystem for advanced research. The event provided an opportunity to highlight the path the country is currently taking to integrate technological capabilities, young talent, and international cooperation, projecting an increasingly robust position in high-energy physics and in the production of cutting-edge scientific knowledge.
