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There exist an enormous, but rather hidden, potential of the existing CERN accelerator infrastructure to conduct new research programs in a very broad domain of science with novel, unprecedented-quality tools. This potential needs to be explored to assure the prominent place of CERN -- as the accelerator-based research leader – even in the case in which its planned, large-cost, high-energy-frontier machines (such as FCC, CLIC or Muon Collider) are nor constructed. In this talk, I shall discuss an initiative which may lead to significant broadening the present CERN research programme by including a new component — the novel-type light source. The proposed, partially-stripped-ion-beam-driven light source is the backbone of the Gamma Factory project. It could be realized at CERN by re-using the infrastructure of the already existing accelerators and by profiting from the recent progress in the laser technology.  It could extend the scientific life of the LHC storage rings beyond its HL-LHC phase. Gamma Factory could push the intensity limits of the presently operating light-sources by at least 7 orders of magnitude, reaching the flux of up to 10¹⁸ photons/s, in the particularly interesting gamma-ray energy domain of 0.1 — 400 MeV, which is presently nor accessible to the FEL photon sources.  The partially stripped ion beams, the unprecedented-intensity energy-tuned gamma beams, together with the gamma-beam-driven secondary beams of polarized positrons, polarized muons, neutrinos, neutrons, and radioactive ions constitute the basic research tools of the Gamma Factory. A broad spectrum of new research opportunities, in a vast domain of uncharted fundamental and applied physics territories, could be opened by the Gamma Factory. Examples of new research opportunities and the status of the project development will be presented in this talk.