NIKHEF

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The NIKHEF ( Nationaal instituut voor subatomaire fysica ; German " National Institute for Subatomic Physics ") is the national Dutch research center for subatomic physics in Amsterdam , located in the Science Park Amsterdam (Watergraafsmeer). It was founded in 1975. It is sponsored by the Dutch society Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (founded in 1946), the University of Amsterdam , the Free University of Amsterdam , the University of Utrecht and the University of Nijmegen . In 2009 around 120 physicists were employed there (half of them permanent with around 100 permanent employees).

The abbreviation NIKHEF actually stands for the old name of the institute, National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics ( Nationaal Instituut voor Kernfysica en Hoge Energie-Fysica ). The name was changed after the closure of the in-house electron accelerator (MEA; AmPS) in 1998, when experimental nuclear physics took a back seat.

The NIKHEF is involved, for example, in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (and in the development of the LHC computer network (LHC Computing Grid) for processing data in the order of petabytes) but also in the investigation of cosmic rays and astroparticle physics (such as the Antares neutrino telescope). The computers at the NIKHEF are also used for research in astrophysics and, for example, for brain research and drug development. One of the seven nodes of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange is also at the NIKHEF.

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