CHEP '95 Opening Remarks from
the Computing & Networks Division Leader at CERN

David O. Williams

It's a pleasure to take part in this Video Conference. I would like to say hello especially to the Conference co-chairs Vicky White from Fermilab and Alberto Santoro from LAFEX. On behalf of CERN, I would like to thank Vicky and Alberto for their hard work toward making CHEP'95 in Brazil.

As we move toward the end of the 20th Century we face an incredible and fantastic challenge: which is to collaborate effectively across several continents, and at a reasonable cost. This is going to be vital for High Energy Physics and also vital for the economic health and growth of many industries and many individual people. High Energy Physics is a technology leader. The HEP community is world wide and its message can be used to advance communications between Europe, South America, North America, Japan, Asia and other parts of the world. It is important that we all, in this community of particle physics, take the time and effort to encourage particle physics communities in developing countries. Science and basic science is of universal value.

A lot has happened in particle physics since the last CHEP Conference in San Francisco, in the spring of 1994. We have seen the unfortunate end of the Superconducting Supercollider. We have seen the discovery of the Top Quark at Fermilab. We have seen the approval of the LHC. An era of major new physics initiatives will begin all over the world. We have the LHC starting at CERN. We have the exciting Fermilab programs, CEBAF is starting taking data, Brookhaven with RHIC is getting closer. There is an enormous amount of data from DESY and other experiments. Exciting things happened in Japan at KEK and at the Lepton-Photon Conference in Beijing last month. We are going to see many expected results and also unexpected things that we did not know would be discovered. I am sure we will see a boost in international communication between laboratories and research institutions. We look forward to advances in object oriented programming techniques (where there are many exciting things to tell you about going on in CERN), advances in data storage and data management, to getting to grips with the problem of the desktop, worldwide collaboration, and attacking the issue of PC and commodity software.

I am sure that this is going to be an exciting meeting and I am looking forward to joining you in Brazil tomorrow. Best wishes from CERN.