During the summer CERN turns into one of the most international and lively places you could ever imagine as hundrends of Summer Students arrive every year from all over the world. Students with different backgrounds spend a few weeks working with their supervisors on numerous topics in scientific research. Among this year's summer students you will meet an astronomer, a biochemist, a computational biologist and even an Olympic Winner! These are young scientists with an incredible amount of talent, intelligence and full of energy.

CERN summer students clearly have an eye for scientific research but also a sharp view that challenges what is often taken for granted. 

Reflecting this unique experience in the issue of a newsletter, not to mention in an article, is not an easy task. However, we decided to give it a try and the results have been rewarding; more than 60 stories coming from both Member and Non-Member students are pinned on a world map of 2013 PH Summer Students*. Explore this interactive map and find out more about their experience as CERN summer students while you can also find links to their universities and more photos. You can also view the full map of 2013 CERN summer students here (please note that in this version students are grouped according to their nationalities). 

We feel indebted to Sharon Lynne Hobson, Laura Saulnier, Eva Tolosa and Anca Burghart for their kind support in this project. Moreover, special thanks goes to the students who participated in a mini editorial board that we formed for this Special Issue of the PH newsletter. They were a great source of inspiration and without their help we would have never succeeded in getting so many stories: Rodrigo Gaston Cortinas, Julia Gonski, Catherine Hsu, Antti Juhani Karjalainen, Ioannis Kiaras, Albert Guiterrez Mila, Silvia Manconi, Vasilis Nicolaou, Cristina Martin Perez, Maria Brigida Brunetti, Argyris Zardylis and Gudmundur Stefansson. 

Many thanks to all the students who shared their experiences, shared their photos and kindly participated in this project. Finally, I am grateful to Vasilis Nicolaou, one of the hidden heroes behind this special issue; "writing code is like writing literature" as he often says. 

Perhaps the best summary of the experience at the end of this project is described in the words that one of the students shared just after leaving CERN: 

"Everything comes to an end so does this summer school for me. I learned a lot of things, physics, programming, astronomy, but the most important thing I realised was something very simple. CERN means nothing without the people working at it, I thought that the things that I will really miss will be the research at CERN and working with particle physics. But the truth is that I will really miss doing that with the people I met there. I will miss the long discussions in R1, chatting with people around the world, admiring the diversity of their culture! It was an amazing experience which I will never forget. I hope the best for all and I hope we meet again someday!". I hope that it won't be too long.

We selected a few stories to appear in this issue of our newsletter. We would love to add more but we thought that it is better for you to have a look on our map where there are more things to discover...

* Students are placed on the map based on the locations of their universities. The map shows only students enrolled in the PH department. You need to enable javascript in order to view this map correctly. We put an effort into achieving the maximum accuracy possible according to the coordinates of their universities. However this hasn't been always possible due to certain limitations. Thank you for your understanding and we will keep working to fix any remaining issues.