This year, 15 students from 12 different countries (Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, India, Italy, Macedonia, Romania and Spain) were part of the CERN openlab Summer Student Programme and worked at CERN in the IT, EN and PH departments for two months during the period June - September.

A special series of 9 lectures were given to the students by CERN experts from mid-July to early August, on advanced CERN-related topics. Based on the feedback received from the students who had participated in the 2009 edition, the topics covered this year were strongly CERN specific technologies oriented. The students were also given the opportunity to attend the general CERN summer student programme lectures. Tomas Tauber, one of the CERN openlab summer students, was actually one of the 28 students (out of the several hundred ones present at CERN this summer) to be selected to present the results of his two-month work during these lectures. The presentation as well as the video of his talk entitled 'Virtualization: Beyond the physical machine limits' are both accessible online. Most of the summer students reports are available to you on the 'technical documents' section of the CERN openlab website. The article he wrote in the autumn issue of the Mensa Czech magazine is also available to you on page 30.

Finding a place to live is a real challenge in Geneva. The students participating in the CERN openlab summer student programme benefit from a very special and cheap hosting facility: the city of Meyrin exceptionally give them the opportunity to leave in one of the city nuclear shelters (a Swiss specificity) located in the city at a particularly low cost. This year, all the students decided to go for this solution and lived together in 'La Golette'. Undeniably a strong experience and a real team building exercise which made their stay with us absolutely unforgettable!

Mélissa Gaillard, CERN openlab