In Angels and Demons, Vittoria Vetra is a scientist from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. She works at the Swiss research facility with her adoptive father, physicist and priest Leonardo Vetra.
CERN is central to the story’s opening. Leonardo has developed a method of creating and containing antimatter, but he is murdered and a canister is stolen. CERN director Maximilian Kohler then brings Vittoria into the investigation alongside Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon.
The novel and 2009 film use CERN as the bridge between modern physics and the thriller’s religious conspiracy. The real CERN operates near Geneva and is famous for particle-physics research, including the Large Hadron Collider. A common mix-up is to identify Vittoria as being from the Illuminati; that is the secret organization opposing the Vatican in the plot, not her employer or scientific affiliation.