Listening to the universe: civil engineering for the Einstein Telescope

Patrick Werneke

Patrick Werneke is senior engineer at Nikhef (The National Institute for Subatomic Physics Nikhef) based in the Netherlands.

He is the head of the Engineering Department for the Einstein Telescope Organisation.

He has been with Nikhef since 1993, contributing to CERN’s ATLAS experiment (muon system and silicon tracker), including almost three years on site during the installation of the end-cap silicon tracker.

Later, he led Nikhef’s Mechanical Technology Department for nearly 15 years.

Today, Patrick is dedicated to the design and development of the Einstein Telescope, Europe’s next-generation gravitational-wave observatory.

Tamara Bud

Tamara, a Chartered Engineer working at CERN on the ET in the Future Studies Section, will provide an overview of how CERN’s civil engineering department is contributing to the ET development and planning.

John Osborne

John Osborne is a senior civil engineer working at CERN, the underground particle physics research laboratory close to Geneva, Switzerland.

He studied at Liverpool University where he graduated with a civil engineering degree in 1988. He joined Tarmac Construction to work mostly on underground projects such as the immersed tube tunnels at Conwy and Medway. John worked on the Jubilee Line extension at Canary Wharf before leaving the UK to join CERN in 1998.

John started at CERN as a Project Manager for the client on the Large Hadron Collider, in particular, on the underground and surface works needed to house one the large detectors called CMS. This £100million worksite consisted of two 100m deep shafts and several large caverns and was completed in 2005.

John now manages a team responsible for civil engineering and infrastructure studies for large scale future physics projects. These have included the 100km Future Circular Collider (FCC) at CERN, the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) and the International Linear Collider (ILC) in Japan.

John is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), a member of the judging panel at the annual UK New Civil Engineer Tunnel Awards and the Switzerland Country Representative for the ICE.