From my professor at the University of Bonn in Germany I learned about the possibility of spending my summer as a summer student at CERN. I had at this time just begun working on my bachelor's thesis on a physics analysis. I thought the CERN summer school would a very good opportunity to get to know other areas of particle physics that I had not yet had the chance to experience during my university studies. I therefore applied for a hardware-oriented project and I am now working in the Solid State Detectors Lab.

My summer student project is about setting up, understanding and performing measurements with an experimental array called ALiBaVa. This setup is designed for the characterization of silicon sensors using a LASER or radioactive source to induce a signal within the sensors and probe their response. So far the LASER setup is operational and the radioactive source setup is about to be completed. Ultimately the ALiBaVa system will be used to study the properties of silicon sensors before and after irradiation. The sensor characterization is part of the RD50 campaign which aims at the development of radiation hard semiconductor detectors for experiments at future high-luminosity colliders. What I like most about my project work is the great variety of things that I can learn and do, from small programming tasks to using experimental setups to perform measurements myself and experiencing the entire chain of data acquisition to first analyses. I enjoy the close supervision of my project by all members of the group as well as the very good work atmosphere.

Apart from my project work I appreciate the area around Geneva a lot, especially for hiking tours to the Alps and the Jura. I am looking forward to my remaining weeks until the end of September. After that I will begin my masters program in physics at the University of Bonn. Whether I want to continue working in the hardware area or elsewhere in particle physics I have not yet decided, but I would certainly like to come back to do research at CERN in the future.