How did you decide to apply for the summer student programme?

Hans Danielsson who works at CERN had a presentation during my third year at my university and meantioned this program. I had already thought about applying as a technical student for my master thesis. So when I heard about this I figured it could be a good way of learning more about CERN and what types of positions they have.

What is your previous background? 

I have never been to CERN and wasn't very familiar with the physics programme of the LHC actually. Of course I knew of what types of physics it was designed to look for but not the details of what the different experiments did or why a they had chosen a hadron collider for example.

Tell us a few words about your project.

I work at LHCb and I am analyzing data for an estimation of the effective cross section of LHCb. I chose to do offline data analysis with Monte Carlo because I figured that would be closest to what I might want to work with in the future.
The cross section is important to the experiment since we want to know at what rate certain processes are produced in the detector.

Is your experience so far close to what you were expecting?

I am too overwhelmed by the experienced that I don't know what has impressed me the most. The opportunity, the people who work at CERN, the lecturers, my fellow summer students, the lectures, Switzerland, France, the detectors. I guess I am most impressed by everything I have learnt just by being here.

From my time as a summer student at CERN I will certainly remember...

How amazing this opportunity is. I mean, if you think about it. We learnt almost everything about CERN, even things that I could never imagine and the rest of the day we worked on a project together with our supervisor which for me was a new and very interesting experience. Since I am making a poster about my project to take home and put up on my wall I will remember the project as well. I will also remember the fun I had with the summer students (including also PhD students, technical students and others...).