Big Science, Innovation, and Societal Contributions offers a connection between Big Science and its societal impacts from a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on physics and astrophysics scholars to explain the reasoning behind their work, and how such knowledge can be applied to everyday life.

Through simplifying complex scientific concepts, Big Science, Innovation, and Societal Contributions explains the evolution of Big Science experiments and what it takes to manage and maintain complex scientific experiments with a human centred approach. Further, it examines the motivations behind international efforts to develop capital-intensive and human resource-rich, large-scale multi-national scientific investments to solve fundamental research problems concerning our future. Drawing on reliable scientific evidence, multi-disciplinary perspectives, and personal insights from collider physics, detectors, accelerator, and telescopes research, the volume outlines the mechanisms, benefits, and methodologies, as well as the potential challenges and short-comings, of Big Science, to learn and reflect on for future initiatives.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Shantha Liyanage, Associate of CERN, ATLAS Project,Markus Nordberg, Head of Resources Development, IPT-DI,Marilena Streit-Bianchi, Vice-President, ARSCIENCIA

Shantha Liyanage obtained a biological science degree, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and a PhD innovation management at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He held professorial appointments at University of Queensland, University of Auckland, University of Macquarie, and University of Technology Sydney. He directed the Technology Management Centre at the University of Queensland, Australia and held visiting professorial appointments with the Nihon University in Japan, Copenhagen Business School, and Zeppelin University Germany. His research covers education, management, and leadership including management research into CERN's ATLAS and CMS experiments. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Learning and Change, Inderscience, UK.


Markus Nordberg coordinates multi-disciplinary innovation projects at IdeaSquare at CERN, and is the co-coordinator of the EU-funded sensor and imaging R&D&I initiative ATTRACT, aiming at both scientific and societal impact of disruptive co-innovation. Prior to this function, he served 12 years as the Resources Coordinator of the ATLAS project at CERN. He is a member of the European Physical Society, Strategic Management Society, and the Association of Finnish Parliament Members and Scientists, TUTKAS. He has a degree both in Physics and in Business Administration.


Marilena Streit-Bianchi received a doctorate in Biological Sciences from the University of Rome and joined CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva in 1969. She has been a pioneer in the study of high-energy particles produced by accelerators for cancer treatment. She has held managerial positions on safety training and technology transfer, has been a senior honorary staff member at CERN, and actively engaged in multidisciplinarity. She is editor and curator of exhibitions in Europe and Mozambique promoting art and science, and is the Vice President of the international association ARSCIENCIA and member of the Italian Physics Society (SIF).

Introduction: Big Science for Social Construction, Shantha Liyanage, Markus Nordberg and Marilena Streit-BianchiBig Science Opportunities and Challenges1. Big Science and Society as Seen through Research Lenses, Markus Nordberg, Shantha Liyanage and Marilena Streit-Bianchi2. Chasing the Success - ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, Peter Jenni, Tejinder Singh Virdee, Ludovico Pontecorvo, and Shantha Liyanage3. A Machine with the Endless Frontiers - Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Lyn Evans, Frédérick Bordry, and Shantha Liyanage4. Innovating Accelerator Technologies for Society, Amalia Ballarino, Tim Boyle and Shantha Liyanage5. Leap Frogging into the Future, Michael Benedikt, John Ellis, Panagiotis Charitos, and Shantha LiyanageInnovation that Works6. Knowledge Diffusion by Design: Transforming Big Science Applications, Christine Thong, Agustí Canals, Anita Kocsis, and Shantha Liyanage7. Big Science Leadership and Collaboration, Grace McCarthy, David Manset, Marilena Streit-Bianchi, Viktorija Skvarciany, and Shantha Liyanage8. The Evolution of Astrophysics Towards Big Science: Insights from the Innovation Landscape, David Reitze, Mark Casali, Alan R Duffy, James Gilbert, Elisabetta Barberio, and Shantha Liyanage9. Big Science Medical Applications from Accelerator Physics- Impact on Society, Mitra Safavi-Naeini, Tim Boyle, Suzie Sheehy and Shantha LiyanageOrganisational and Societal Implications10. Big Science as a Complex Human Enterprise, Beatrice Bressan, Anita Kocsis, Pablo Garcia Tello and Shantha Liyanage11. Big Science and Social Responsibility of the Digital World, Ruediger Wink, Alberto Di Meglio, Marilena Streit-Bianchi and Shantha Liyanage12. Well-ordered Big Science, Innovation, and Social Entrepreneurship, Faiz Shah, Beatrice Bressan, Pablo Garcia Tello, Marilena Streit-Bianchi and Shantha Liyanage13. Future of Big Science Projects in Particle Physics- Asian Perspectives, Geoffrey Taylor and Shantha Liyanage14. Social and Educational Responsibility of Big Science, Steven Goldfarb, Christine Kourkoumelis, Viktorija Skvarciany, Christine Thong, and Shantha Liyanage15. Contributions of Big Science and Innovation to Society, Shantha Liyanage, Markus Nordberg and Marilena Streit-Bianchi