I am a student from China. I first saw the information of the CERN summer student program in my university’s website. Since some of my teachers and my fellow students who have helped me with my bachelor’s thesis have worked or are working at CERN. I felt interested in the institution. For I have done some work about H->ZZ->4l analysis, I want to learn more and it couldn’t be a better place to learn it at CERN. 

I am now working in CMS group as a summer student. My project focuses on the analysis of the Higgs->gamma gamma, and my job is to first see the difference between the distribution of gamma or jets which decay from Higgs from vbf and those from gg fusion, and then to use the TMVA to made separation from those two sources, and the final goal is to set up the cuts in which we obtained more Higgs from vbf while as less events from gg fusion.

My experience at CERN is very close to what I expected: first going through the tutorial, then using a real code and finally using my own tools for analysing the data, meeting supervisor few times a week to report my work progress and to get further instructions.

I didn't have to study about CMS before coming here. I just could use some simple ROOT before and almost knew nothing about the CMS project.

Now I just graduated from my college, I am planning to study more on the CMS and I will be very glad to move on my research at CERN.

By the way, the summer in Swiss is much better than in China, for the temperature in China at this time is about 37 centigrade. In comparison, the summer here is really cool and I enjoyed it very much. We don’t need to work during the weekend, we could go to outside the see the scene of Europe. Here is very different from China, people here are few, we don’t have to squeeze in the bus, the buildings here are short, the cars here will wait for people. In Geneva, I saw the people celebrate the festival and hold the music party in a whole street.

I’ve learned a lot in this summer, not only about code writing, but also some methods to do the analysis. The people here are also very friendly in their attitude. For instance, my Italian supervisor is so nice that he patiently explain the knowledge to me, and I will never forget the heavy beard on his face. As a Chinese, I could not enjoy the cold food and chips here, so I, with another Chinese fellow, went to Carrefour to buy the food to cook for ourselves. It is the first time in my life that I am cooking. Although the taste is not so good, I would never forget this precious experience. Thanks CERN for giving me the opportunity to practice here. I’ve gained so much in these few weeks.