The legislation, by which the Institute was founded, was passed by the Finnish Parliament in summer 1996 and operations began on September 1 of the same year. The foundation for the Institute was provided by the three previous Helsinki-based institutes: SEFT, TFT and HTI, which were merged into the new organization. The project oriented theoretical physics programme of the institute places strong emphasis on areas of current interest, including string theory and field theory, cosmology, particle phenomenology, biological physics and relativistic heavy ion physics.

The HIP research in experimental subatomic physics at CERN falls into three research programmes. The CMS programme focuses on the construction of the CMS detector at the LHC and physics simulation studies and software development for the analysis CMS data. The CMS experiment starts in 2007. The programme, in addition, develops radiation hardened silicon detectors for the subsequent high luminosity phase of the experiment.

• University of Helsinki