CERN

For an update on my work at CERN check the link to my presentation this week: https://indico.cern.ch/event/568529/

Also another one I helped develop:

https://indico.cern.ch/event/580801/contributions/2361109/attachments/1365015/2067393/PMTResults.pdf

London

London was a pretty fun place to visit! One wierd thing I felt when visiting was my transition from a French speaking country back to an English speaking country. Whenever a spontaneous event which I needed to respond to, I would immediately spew out my French, realizing opps I meant “Blah Blah” in English.

Tower of London

The Tower of London was a palace and prison all in one. The tower was used to hold many high level political prisoners and was fortified by a group of guards. Currently at the tower, the crown jewels are housed inside the complex. The crown jewels consists of  various items used for the coronations of the queens of London. Additionally, the tower has other areas such as a torture area, a church and a bunch of small houses.

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge connects the two halfs of London, the bridge consists of two main towers which are connected with a upper and lower walkway. The upper walkway is a vantage point to see the whole city and devoted to the history of bridges. I was able to get some awesome pics over the whole city from here!

Bonfire Night

Bonfire night is in memorial to Guy Fawkes who tried to set fire to the British Parliament building, although he failed. Therefore, in memory to this event a memorial of this event is held every year on the attempted day of November the 5th(See V for Vendetta if you have not). My Bonfire night consisted of attending an array of events held at Battersea park. During my time there, I saw a little fire show, huge bonfire lighting and a music synced fireworks show. All of it was amazing! Some of the songs with the fireworks really made the show spectacular.

The Eye

The eye for those not familiar is a giant ferris wheel with a diameter of 120 meters. I was able to ride the ferris wheel and snap some really nice city scape pictures of London.  

British Museum

The British Museum is a free sight with many famous items in its collection such as the Rosetta Stone. I was able to visit here for an hour and see many of the ancient history collections from Egypt and Japan! Overall this museum was really cool and would have definitely spent more time here.

This week at CERN, I spent my time testing the data acquisition system for reading out data from fiber optic cables. I discovered after data analysis that the data has a large amount of noise. Therefore, I attempted to sample the background without fiber optic signals and subtract the mean of the background from my signal as a method of noise reduction. Even after attempting to perform this operation, my signal was not visible. After all of this, I attempted to sample the actual signal straight from the sensor using an oscilloscope. I was able to acquire this and found, very little noise and a clear 1mV signal. Once I had seen this, immediately I knew we just needed a better readout system then what is currently used.

Aside from lab work, this week was Tile week, which is a week devoted to the running, debugging and upgrading of the Tile Calorimeter. I attended almost all the sessions related to upgrades as my project is in the upgrades sector. During the week, I developed one slide for the larger optics feasibility study presentation related to my custom 3D printed fiber coupling scheme. If you would like to take a look at some of the talk this week, including mine, check out: https://indico.cern.ch/event/573823/ (my slide is in the last talk)

This weekend, I went to Paris for the day! I was able to see the Louvre and the Mondial de l’auto exhibit, check out some short descriptions below:

The Louvre was an awesome museum to see! I went to the Dinde section for the majority of time that I was there, which included ancient Roman and Greek work. Additionally, this is the section that included a view of the Mona Lisa. I budgeted myself, four hours for this museum but you can definitely spend days here. After hitting many of the key works I wanted to see in the Dinde section, I immediately speed ran through other key works including Napoleon's apartment, the crown jewels and many more works. I tried to take a few photos here and there, check them out on the google story.

The Mondial de l’auto is one of the largest auto shows in the world held in Paris. The show featured, 8 different huge exhibition halls filled with many of the latest and greatest cars. I started off at the 1st building and was only able to make it to building 7 by the time the show closed(Spent like 5 hours here). All the show halls were just so amazing, I spent every second admiring the beauty of all of the cars. One interesting part about the show was, concept cars were a large part of some exhibitions. Many of these cars had a dazzling shell, with awesome ideas behind them like fully electric, autonomous driving capability or full body analytics(blinking, head turning, awareness, sleepy, tons more). Another cool part about the show was there was a exhibit hall devoted to movie cars. I was fascinated by all the different cars, I had seen before, such as: Ghostbusters’ car, Jurassic Park’s Jungle car, 007 film cars and many more. I loved this show and would definitely recommend for car enthusiasts to visit.

The Montparnasse tower was a 59th story panoramic sky view of Paris,  conveniently located right near my hotel! Without a doubt, when in Paris, come here. The tower, has a beautiful view from the 59th floor including views of the Eiffel Tower. Now it can get a little cold up there, hence bring a jacket or relax on the heated 56th floor viewing area. Also, if you're hungry or want something to drink there is a nice snack stand on the 56th floor. Back to the view, I was able to see the Eiffel Tower twinkle during its once an hour twinkle, on the top of the hour. I have some really cool pictures here, so check them out!

I got back from Paris at 10am, so I still had  a large amount of time to tour around Geneva until work tomorrow. Therefore, I finally was able to go and see the UN building in Geneva. The UN building has a pretty cool scene, including a fountain show, the broken chair and row of flags. I'm definitely going to come back for a tour of the building, so check back for a description of that! After that, I saw a sign for a park, which I thought would be a normal little path with some nice fall foliage. I was surprised to find a full botanical garden  with a small zoo!

The botanical gardens are beautiful, they had plants from all different exotic locations. The gardens even had a small little zen garden with a Japanese style setup. Additionally, one side of the gardens there was a zoo with deer, mountain goats, ducks, flamingos and many more animals. While visiting all these locations, I noticed a weird roped off path people kept walking down. I followed this path, and saw a sign detailing that this was a nature walk of the whole Geneva lake shore. I kept following the route, seeing all the beautiful lake views and different gardens of Geneva. This was an awesome little event!

Food in Paris was hands down amazing. The French know how to cook food with fresh and quality ingredients. I had 3 meals in Paris each great! Many times though, I had no clue what I was ordering, therefore what came out of the kitchen was a surprise to me. Quick wrap up of the food that I ate, veal scaloppine, steak?, sauteed potatoes, mushroom sauce pasta, duck, french fries, Nutella crepe and a croissant. Great mix, do come to Paris if you want some quality food.

As for back in Geneva, I went to Domaine de l’orcy(Apple orchard) on Sunday. The orchard was small, although still had some great trees to pick all different types of Apples. Now, I wasn't there for Apples but for Apple cider, my favorite fall time beverage! Sadly, from first sight, all they had was jus de pomme(Apple Juice), which I wound up buying a 5L box. Later when I got home, I discovered my Apple Juice really was Apple Cider! All in all, this week was a great food week with some quality dishes.

Intro

Program Info 

The program provides housing, airfare, food stipends and any other support costs. To be accepted to the program students must have completed 2 years of university and have a solid programming/high energy physics background. The application process entailed, providing 2 letters of recommendation, university transcript, programming background and motivation for working at CERN. After applying, the application is then reviewed by the foundation's board of directors and a decision if you are accepted is made. This whole application process for me took about 2 month. Although, after being accepted to the program, I also needed to fill out school specific forms for the position.

Paperwork Preparation :(

In review, I was accepted by the foundation last February and have been preparing for my time at CERN ever since. The first step was finding a flight and all that jazz. So, I began searching Expedia and all the other mechanism for a flight to Geneva International Airport around September,when I would be leaving. Once I had completed this, things calmed down for the most part in terms of preparing to go abroad until June. June, the foundation had us prepare for getting Work Visas just to allow us to have full flexibility in terms of our stay at CERN. The Visa process was far simpler than I had initially excepted. On the Consulate's website, there are a list of about 10 support documents one needs to obtain for applying for a Visa. I acquired all the various documents including proof of residence, proof of insurance, proof of ... and when I arrived at the consulate all I needed was one document (My CERN Contract). The Consulate worker explained to me that for CERN workers Visa fees and paperwork are simplified to allow easy travel of scientist to and from CERN. All together my visit at the consulate lasted about 20 minuted including waiting to enter the Consulate. At this point I had to wait about 2 weeks for the paper work to be processed and my Visa to be applied to my passport. Aside from obtaining my Visa, the only other paperwork I filled out was a necessary CERN pre-application form.

Programming and Physics Preparation :)

Now to the best part so far! In July my mentor at CERN emailed me, informing to me, that I would be working on the ATLAS experiment on various hardware and software improvements. These improvements are being performed to increase ATLAS's sensitivity to new particles. In terms of software my mentor explained to me, CERN uses an object oriented framework known as Root a top C++. Since, I have already taken mutiple classes on C++ I didn't really to do much catching up on it. Although, I began playing around with CERN's new open data system which included mutiple tutorials on Root. As for high energy physics(HEP) preparation, I tried to read a few of the Griffiths books on particle physics/quantum mechanics in tandem with watching a few video lectures from Stanford's particle physics class. Coming from a engineering background compared to a hard science my grasp on these HEP concepts are still loose although they should solidify with practice at CERN.
Wrap Up
So wondering whats next: In this blog, I am going to try to include as much detail as I can provide about my experience working at CERN along with my weekend trips that I take to other countries. I will try to blog about once a week depending on my work schedule. Hope you enjoy!