Status of the CMS detector at the LHC and searches for new physics with CMS

The first beam collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN are expected to happened in the second half of 2007 and the first physics runs will probably take place a few months later. The CMS detector is currently being assembled and the subdetectors will be lowered down into the CMS Cavern starting from Summer 2006. In this talk we will first review the present status and the main characteristics of the CMS detector, as it will be in place when the LHC will be closed and set up for beam in 2007. We will then examine the capability of the CMS experiment to address the experimental searches for New Physics at the LHC. In particular, we concentrate on the first year(s) of LHC operations, since new physics at the TeV scale may manifest itself even in modest data samples of the order of a few fb-1. A few emblematic searches for the Higgs boson and for supersymmetric particles are discussed, with emphasis on processes characterized by clean final states with photons, electrons and muons. From this point of view we also highlight the physics potential of the CMS electromagnetic crystal calorimeter and its calibration strategies. (Author)