Javier Serrano is the Deputy Group Leader of the accelerator Controls Electronics and Mechatronics group at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. An engineer and physicist by training, his work on controls and data acquisition for particle accelerators was recognised in 2017 through the ICALEPCS Lifetime Achievement Award. He specialises in very precise synchronisation solutions such as White Rabbit, an extension of Ethernet whose reference implementation is fully open-source hardware, gateware, firmware and software.
A native of Castellón, Spain, Javier was one of the trailblazers in the early days of Open Hardware, and has contributed extensively to its practice on several fronts: creating and managing the Open Hardware Repository, co-authoring the CERN Open Hardware Licence, working with companies and other stakeholders in finding appropriate business models, and coordinating CERN’s contribution to the development of KiCad. He initiated the Electronics Design Automation (EDA) devroom in FOSDEM and organised it during its first five years (2015-19), incorporating Open Hardware in its scope. He is an alum Board Member of the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) and was involved in the launch of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH).
Javier is also very keen on education and advocacy. He enjoys taking groups of students around the laboratory, teaching them Physics through hands-on experiments and telling them about Open (Science | Data | Access | Software | Hardware). He contributed to the drafting of the hardware section of CERN’s Open Science Policy and to the creation of an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at CERN, of which he is an active member. With CERN's Knowledge Transfer group, he created the White Rabbit Collaboration in 2024, investigating new types of public-private partnerships and combining open source with economic activity and impact.
