Being a young researcher in a collaboration the size of CMS can be daunting, and requiring to move to CERN even more so. A new scholarship has been set up with the aim of supporting master's students, PhD researchers or post-docs of the CMS Collaboration for a year's stay at CERN.

The scholarship is funded by a portion of the money awarded earlier this year by the Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation and is organised by a committee comprised of several CMS members in the early stages of their careers. The Prize was given to all past and present spokespersons of the CMS and ATLAS collaborations in recognition of their leadership in the programme that culminated in the discovery of the Higgs boson as announced on 4 July 2012.

After the award ceremony, current CMS Spokesperson Joe Incandela invited young members of CMS to give their suggestions for how they envision using his portion of the funds to support their fellow collaborators. It was decided that the best approach would be to set up a mechanism for providing financial support to young CMS scientists to spend time at CERN, where they could get more deeply involved in the collaboration. Many of those involved in these discussions then volunteered to join the scholarship committee in order to help make this a reality.

Over the course of a few weeks, procedures –– voted on by the entire committee –– had been put into place and application forms were prepared for the first CMS Fundamental Physics Scholarship. An announcement was formally made to the entire CMS Collaboration during the July CMS Week.

The annual scholarship offers one young scholar from a CMS institute or an institute with an expression of interest to join CMS 20,000 Swiss Francs to supplement their income while based at CERN. Those interested should submit their application along with a strong research proposal, stating what they expect to achieve in the year they would be supported at CERN. A sub-committee is ready to help the selected scholar to find accommodation and go through all the procedures needed to settle in and get going with their research.

Please note that the application deadline has been extended to 6 October. The first CMS Fundamental Physics Scholarship will be presented in December this year. You can get more details at http://cern.ch/cmsfps