Second Lithuanian Particle Physics Meeting

On the 11th of April, 2022 around 30 Lithuanian scientists with interest in particle physics gathered virtually for the second time in Lithuanian Particle Physics Meeting (LPPM2022). The meeting had also a large number of invited guests from Lithuanian universities and government institutions.

The meeting started with a round of short introductions. As many of the participants gave talks last year, the introductions allowed us to refresh each other’s memories and advertise any future plans. Next, we had the pleasure of listening to the presentation by Mario Pimenta from Portugal. Mario is the director of LIP — Portuguese particle laboratory and he gave a short account of how LIP and the particle physics community was created in Portugal, nearly 40 years ago. Portugal’s experience is relevant to Lithuania, where particle physics was almost nearly non-existent before Lithuania joined CERN in 2018.

After the guest’s presentation, we started the discussion of particle physics in Lithuania. It was particularly welcoming that representatives from Foreign and Education Ministries, Vilnius, and Kaunas Universities attended LPPM2022 and contributed to the discussion. Participants were able to raise their concerns directly to the people responsible for shaping the particle physics initiatives in Lithuania. LPPM2022 also hosted three scientists from Lithuania, who have returned from abroad. Their experience returning to the homeland is very relevant to many of the meeting attendants. Finally, we discussed how to make particle physics more accessible to students in Lithuania and decided to create a dedicated Discord server.

I was very happy that our meeting and community gained a certain level of visibility. Hopefully, this will result in stronger support for particle physics needs in Lithuania.