Terms and Conditions 2025

Thank you very much for your participation! Please read the following terms and conditions regarding the Beamline for Schools competition carefully. Please also note that, by entering the competition, you will be deemed to have understood and agreed to them in full as follows:

 

  1. The deadline for team registrations and submission of the proposals and videos is 10 April 2025 at 23:59 CEST. We regret that late or non-compliant registrations or submissions will not be considered. Make sure to keep a backup copy of your proposal.
  2. The BL4S competition is intended for students aged 16 to 19 years who, at the time of submitting their proposal, are attending a secondary/high school. 
    In this context, participants should note that under the applicable safety rules in force, only students aged 16 and above are allowed on CERN's and DESY's premises to conduct experiments. Accordingly, only those members of a winning team who are 16 years old at the time of their visit (September 2025) will be able to travel to the CERN or DESY site. We appreciate participant’s understanding that our rules reflect international safety standards and as such there is no flexibility on this issue.
  3. CERN and DESY will select three winning proposals from the submissions. The winning teams will then be invited to CERN (two teams) or DESY (one team) to perform the experiments that they proposed together with the other winning teams.
  4. A team needs to consist of a minimum of 5 members to be able to be invited as a winning team to CERN or DESY. A maximum of 9 students per winning team will be invited to CERN or DESY. In addition, in accordance with CERN’s and DESY's internal safety rules, each winning team will need to be accompanied by one or two adult supervisors for the full duration of their stay.
  5. For data privacy reasons, students need to be aged 16 years or older on the day that they are submitting their proposal. If students are younger than 16 years when submitting their proposal, they can still participate either anonymously or with parental consent of data processing. Anonymous participation means that the name of these students should not be written during the submission (not on the proposal and not in the submission form). If students younger than 16 years would like to receive a personalised participation certificate, they need to upload a parental consent document. Participants will be asked to indicate whether there are students aged less than 16 years in their team and if these students prefer an anonymous participation or participation with the consent of their parent(s)/legal guardian(s).
  6. Any participant that subsequently travels to CERN or DESY as a member of a winning team will, in due course, need to ensure that she/he has health and accident insurance cover that is adequate for Switzerland and that the documents that prove that they have this cover are available for inspection during their visit to CERN or DESY.
  7. Respect copyright! Please do not include third-party content in your proposal without written permission. Note that this applies to still images, video and music. Any entry that violates copyright or other third-party rights will be disqualified. By submitting your proposal, you confirm to CERN and DESY that your proposal is your own original work and only contains material that you have all necessary permissions to use. In addition, don’t use offensive or inappropriate material in your proposal!
  8. By entering your proposal and video in the competition, you consent to their subsequent potential publication by CERN and DESY and their use by either as part of their scientific and outreach activities. To this end you agree to vest all copyright in your proposal and video, together with any resulting data, in CERN and DESY. Please note that the competition will entail education and outreach events involving references to the participants and their schools/institutions. By entering the competition, you will also be deemed to consent to the use of your name, your team’s name and your participation in the competition for CERN’s and DESY's education and outreach purposes. Your details and those of your team and its proposal  and video will also be shared with the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG) for their outreach purposes.
  9. CERN and DESY may make interviews, recordings and images of participants and their activities in the context of this competition. CERN and DESY will only use such material as part of their education, outreach and fundraising activities. For this purpose, all participants of the winning teams (or, if they are under 18 or are under the legal age of majority in the country where they are applying, their respective parent(s)/legal guardian(s)) will have to sign the CERN / DESY Consent Form (these documents will be provided after the announcement of the winning teams).
  10. CERN or DESY may request further information from you in the selection process, if they consider that this information would be helpful for the evaluation of your proposal.
  11. CERN and DESY reserve the right to postpone, suspend, cancel or modify the competition at any time and for any reason, including in case of insufficient participation.
  12. CERN and DESY will apply utmost care to the selection of the winning proposals. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to communicate the reasons for any non-selection. The selection decisions are final and not subject to claim or appeal. No correspondence will be entered into by either CERN or DESY in this regard.
  13. The CERN Privacy Notices governing the processing of personal data by CERN in the context of the Beamline for Schools preregistration and proposal submission can be consulted here: Preregistration, proposal submission.