BEFORE COMING TO CERN

1- Make sure you have a passport that will be valid a minimum of 3 months after the beginning of the trip. Some airlines will not let you fly if your passport will expire in less than 3 months.

2- Check if you need to get visas for Switzerland and France. US citizens do not need to get visas for visits less than 3 months; however for longer trips they need to obtain visas.

3- To facilitate the procedure to get the Swiss visa you need to request an invitation letter (long term or short term depending on the length of planned stay) from the US-CMS Project Office at CERN (yazgan@cern.ch). The invitation letter will be signed by the CERN authorities and the original will be mailed to the requestor via express mail. A copy is faxed to the relevant Swiss consulate.

4- To get a short term French visa you need to request a Protocole d’accueil from the US-CMS Project Office at CERN (yazgan@cern.ch). After being signed by the CERN and French authorities the letter will be sent to the requestor via express mail and be faxed to the relevant French consulate. The long term visa requires a Note Verbale that is sent directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the CERN Relations with Host States Service. The ministry then sends it to the relevant consulate. Please keep in mind that this process takes approximately 4-6 weeks, so make sure you will have enough time to get the visa.

5- Make sure you will be covered by a health and disability insurance as it is required both for the visa and the CERN registration procedures.

6- Make appointments with the consulates. You will need to apply at the consulate responsible for your current dwelling place. For Swiss visas and the short term French visa you will need to apply with the letter provided by the US-CMS Project Office at CERN. Make sure you allow 4-6 weeks for the long term French visa before you go to the consulate.

7- Find out other documentation required by the consulates before you go and make sure you have all necessary documents.

8- Book airline tickets. Some consulates may require a copy of the flight itinerary. Please keep in mind that a US carrier has to be preferred if the trip will be paid by US-CMS grant money.

9- Arrange accommodation and rental cars. The US-CMS Project Office at CERN can help you with these arrangements.

10- Consult the CERN Users' Office Guide for Newcomers webpage for additional information.

GETTING REGISTERED AT CERN

1. The first thing to do is fill out the form found here and take it to the CERN Users' Office to get your CERN registration document. Please take note of the things they require for registration - notably, your passport, passport photos and a copy of your current contract with your institute stating dates of employment as well as health and disability insurance information. For Fermilab employees, Tami Kramer can sign as deputy team leader and produce a letter of employment. For all other institutes, the CERN Registration form has to be signed by the team leader of the institute.

2. Once registered, your CERN document gives you access to the CERN site. You should also obtain an Access Card which grants entry to access controlled areas like experimental areas and test beams. This card is available in Building 55, on the first floor. You will need to take the Basic Safety course on the ground floor of the same building. After the course, you must validate your card in the machine. For access to the underground area at the CMS site, you will need Level 4 training.

3. If you plan to work in areas exposed to radiation, you'll need a medical certificate signed by a qualified medical service in order to get a film badge- this form is also available on the page mentioned above under FAQ - RP course. The film badge office is in Building 24 E-011 (internal phone number 72155).

4. If you plan to be working long term on CMS, you should also register with the CMS Secretariat in Building 40 5-B08.

5. In order to use your laptop at CERN, the MAC addresses of all of the network interfaces you plan to use (wireless and hard-wired) must be registered with the CERN Network service. You can do this yourself, if you have a NICE account (an account on the MS Windows infrastructure at CERN). If you do not have a NICE account, the network form you fill out must be sent to a CERN Staff member for approval. Note that most US CMS people have USER (visitor) status and not CERN Staff status, so they cannot approve your form. However, if the person with user status has a NICE account, they can fill out the form for you and register your laptop.

6. Once you are registered with the User's Office (it may take a day to get into the CERN HR database), you can apply for computer accounts. Fill out the form available here and take it to one of the computer group administrators for CMS - Martti Pimia (Building 40 3-A20) or Werner Jank (Building 40 3-A24). The Computer Group Code for CMS is ZH. NICE is the MS Windows infrastructure at CERN, LXPLUS is Linux/AFS, AIS is for Administrative services like CERN's Electronic Document Handling system (EDH). For EDH you will be given a login password and an authorization password which allows you to authorize documents.

7. You will be crossing borders everyday if you are commuting between CERN cites and/or you live in France, so it might be a god idea to keep your passport with you.