For the 2023-2024 academic year I have been spending my time abroad in Geneva performing research on behalf of CERN. The research I did relates to a part of a detector at the Large Hadron Collider, a high energy particle collider located across the French/Swiss border. In this blog I intend to give a bit of insight into my experiences and thoughts about spending a year abroad.
I was accepted onto the study abroad programme after studying at the University of Southampton for 2 years. Students who have taken suitable modules can apply and 3 will be selected to go to Geneva in the 4th and final year of their degree.
I stayed in Geneva from October 2023 to May 2024, performing independent research with guidence from 2 supervisors who worked with the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. My supervisors were incredibly helpful and were able to give me important data as a part of my research.
My project primarily focused on a part of the CMS detector known as the Electromagnetic Laser Calibration system, and aims to update the energy readings every 40 minutes. This isn’t what the RAL team works on however it ties directly to the work they do on the trigger system, which effectivley filters the results from 40 million particle collisions per second to 100,000 using hardware.
My project initially began as investigating the timing values and seeing if a timing calibration was also possible (as the timing is currently calibrated weekly). This was quickly seen as not feasable, however some anomalous results began occuring with the laser calibration system in late 2023 and results were off by a few %. This does not affect the final energy readings of the detector although my research changed to investigating the laser data and finding irregularities. My final results were finding sudden spikes in the timing data that related to these anomalies, and a few other bugs that may be worth investigating further.
Upon moving to Geneva I quickly found out that most people in my area do not speak English and I was foolish to not learn basic French beforehand, I was able to live just fine even with the language barrier although it certainly held me back. All of the housing nearby were large appartments and I stayed in a 2 bedroom apartment with a good friend of mine who also made it on the CERN programme. We stayed in a small town called Meyrin and lived close to CERN, and were less than an hour from the town centre.
Shortly after arriving I was informed that there were a group of about 30 PhD students sent from across the UK. These people were very friendly and became the people I spoke to the most while abroad, organising events, parties, weekly pub trips and an afforadable ski trip. I recieved a lot of good advice about doing a PhD and the experiences they were having, as well as how their CERN experience differed from mine. Southampton Univerisity is the only group that sends masters students, and so because of that things such as rent were mostly self funded without a PhD income. The projects also last longer than 1 year which allows far more time to understand the theory and be better prepared for when they arrive at CERN, as well as overcome unexpected challenges.
Geneva is one of the most expensive places to live in, however there are many things that you can do cheaply in the area. Public transport within the city is quite cheap, and there are 2 mountains that are both about an hour away (one gets a snowy peak for most of the year). I personally found the nightlife and nights out a little underwhelming, however being near a lot of great views is a very good plus.
While staying in Geneva I did feel heavily judged by many of the locals, I would not say that I felt particularly welcome while staying but I was also not subjected to any direct hate, more of a ‘tsk’ sound when people hear me speak. Many of my friends that came to visit unfortunatley had similar experiences and my brother was laughed at for being a British person on a tram. Despite this we passed by an event in Geneva town centre which consisted of many smaller marching bands representing differnt cultures across Europe. It was a lovely and lively atmosphere with a lot of effort put in, and showed to me that diveristy is something valued in the area despite the actions of some of the locals.
Geneva town centre is a very beutiful place, most of the stores are quite fancy and out of my budget but the town itself is great to explore. The town is split into 2 areas through a small bridge across lake Geneva, I personally preferred the look of old geneva and the St Pierre Cathedral. There is also a small beach along the river and a lot of nice coffee shops with a great view, or you can rent a paddleboat for quite a good price. Cycling in Geneva is very easy with bike lanes almost everywhere, and CERN have a bike rental service that only charges during the summer.
CERN also provides a lot of cool experiences, around January-February the LHC is off and you can go for a tour around each of the detectors. I personally went to CMS, ATLAS, and LHC-b, and also got to pop my head inside the old DELPHI detector. You can be trained to do tours of these detectors and get paid for them, and there are many other work opportunities for students.
The projects given are difficult to do in only 1 academic year and it is unlikely that your work will be finished, often times this isn’t in your control as your work will be involved with many teams, each with their own priorities. This personally isn’t something I enjoyed about CERN, the projects are grand and I much prefer to work in smaller teams where problems can be spoken about and everyone is on the same page.
I decided that CERN is a wondeful place but not somewhere I would want to work, and it made me realise that I am better suited to pursue a PhD in quantum technology rather than continuing with particle physics. I personally did not have the greatest time abroad as I had to balance my money a lot, I lost a fair amount of weight from not being able to comfortably afford groceries or afford a gym membership and I no longer have any savings left. This alongside what I have previously spoken about lead to the year being very stressful to keep myself afloat. I think living in Geneva stress free would be a much better experience and would have let me properly explore and enjoy everything I did. I still enjoyed many of my experiences there and I would not trade it for a traditional university year, the lessons I learned were invaluable and helped me better understand who I want to be and what I want to do. The experience of living abroad was unique with ups and downs, and I hope anyone who wishes to get onto the same programme I did can read this article and prepare themselves for any challenges they may expect.
-Alfie Preston.