Kimara Naicker

It has been an unexplainable experience! As a physicist, this is the epitome, no place tops CERN – the ‘centre of scientific excellence’. This internship has developed me as a researcher and has allowed me to gain work experience which has taken me out of my comfort zone of being a student. I have been lucky enough to partake in discussions with many experienced and talented individuals at CERN who are in my field of interest.

The internship was a total of eight weeks where I worked on site at CERN at the ISOLDE facility where I was a part of the Solid State Physics group. My supervisor during my time here was Dr Juliana Schell. All eight weeks composed of profitable work both experimentally and theoretically. My knowledge has been enriched far beyond what I had thought was possible during this time. Apart from multiple social activities such as concerts, lunches, outdoor activities, web fests, poster sessions, seminars and focus groups where the organisation STFC (who had funded my specific internship seeing that South Africa is not a member-state of CERN) had sat down with us to have our personal feedback over lunch, a four week long lecture series was arranged where some of the world’s most famous physicists and scientists shared some of their research with us – it was fantastic!

As if that wasn’t enough, many workshops were set up where we had guided tours through restricted facilities at CERN and even the chance to build our own detectors! Without argument, the highlight of the entire experience has been that I have been involved in hands-on experiments. The infrastructure and equipment at the ISOLDE facility is unlike any other experimental hall I have worked in before. The satisfaction of being a part of a team here cannot be measured.