site.btaBulgarian Engineer Miroslav Atanasov on His Work at CERN

Engineer Miroslav Atanasov participated in the establishment of MedAustron, an interdisciplinary and supra-regional Austrian centre for cancer treatment with particle therapy, which is also a leading research unit. He managed to fulfill his dream of working in the world's largest particle physics laboratory at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Atanasov was presented in the "Untold Stories of Bulgarians" section of the health website of Bulgarians in Austria Sanus et salvus.

"I arrived at CERN in 2011 on a two-year program. At the beginning I had some administrative problems. But the people I started with found another project for me: to develop electromagnets for an accelerator for hadron therapy. It destroys cancer cells in the human body by attacking them with beams of proton-charged particles. The MedAustron facility is Austrian and installed near Vienna. At CERN, we carried out a large part of the production of the individual components of the accelerator and created its overall design," said Atanasov.

The entire accelerator was then exported and assembled in Austria, and many patients found successful treatment through it. "Thus, we have created a promising means of treating cancer formations that spares healthy tissue by using beams of protons to point radiation only at the cells we want to destroy. The radiation breaks the DNA, the bonds in the tumor cells and they stop reproducing," explained Atanasov.

The engineer worked on this project for 7-8 months. After that, a job is opened in the same section of CERN. He applied for and won a five-year employment contract. CERN's aim with  five-year contracts is to constantly renew its staff and to bring in new people who are not only involved in accelerator physics. Thus, they also attract specialists from the industry who have other valuable experience. There is also a core of specialists, among whom is Atanasov, who has already signed a permanent employment contract.

Some 2,500 specialists work permanently at CERN. Another 8,000 physicists and engineers from 580 universities in 85 countries work temporarily on specific projects. Bulgaria has been a member of CERN since 1990. 

Seen through the eyes of Atanasov, CERN looks like this: "We have a large complex of particle accelerators that support experimental areas, in which areas we have to deliver beams of protons, ions or rays in general. They are used for basic research. The complex must run constantly so that physicists have enough particles to study. Fundamental physics is difficult and hard to understand, but it is one way to get to know matter and understand it. Here, Europe allocates funds for the ideas that will serve us in the future. CERN was created after the Second World War, when the destructive potential of the new physics was understood and it was decided to create something pan-European that would "harness" the nuclear potential for creation, not destruction."

The scientific product that CERN creates is not for sale. "We are absolutely open, the knowledge we obtain is not protected by patents, but is publicly available to anyone who wants to know. For example, all hospital scanners have evolved from detector technology. All these scanners require superconducting magnets, which we are developing here. This is also where the project for medical accelerators began, the first was in Italy and now - in Austria. We are already working to make them more compact and more affordable, because currently they are an expensive device. The Austrian accelerator MedAustron cost about EUR 250 million," explained Atanasov.

Atanasov responded to an invitation by the Technical University in Plovdiv, and on March 28 he delivered a remote lecture to students and visitors.