Elective: Week 1

I'm starting my six-week elective at the ISOLDE facility at CERN, in collaboration with HES-SO, on the novel imaging modality of gamma-MRI. After a tense week figuring out my insurance status following the government's advice against "all but essential travel" to Switzerland, I still wasn't sure if I'd be covered but decided I might as well risk it and get on the plane anyway.

Friday, my first day there, was hazy. I woke up at 4AM to get on the flight there, and that same afternoon I met Magda, one of my supervisors, in what felt like a moment of cinematic exposition in front of CERN's famous Globe of Science and Innovation (no points for the name). 

Sure, the name is "descriptive", but is that enough of an excuse?

We had a very enthusiastic chat about the technique of gamma-MRI, and where the team was on the project currently. Magda gave me some previous students' theses, and I also managed to ask some specific questions based on the prior reading I'd done before coming out to Switzerland, so was feeling very optimistic about the coming six weeks. The impostor syndrome, however, started to kick in as we were discussing my previous scientific work, and she asked me what I had done in my PhD. Oh. It turned out the only other scientist training programme (STP) trainee she'd worked with had started the programme after finishing his PhD, so she assumed a doctorate was a requirement. I thought I managed to claw back some points explaining that I'd worked with the ATLAS project on my master's, dropping in every bit of technical and programming experience I felt I could without dangerously upselling myself. I was still feeling optimistic, but now more cautiously so.

I had the weekend to settle into Geneva, a city where I had been once before on a school trip to CERN in the winter of 2012. That winter (-17°C) provided some marked contrast to the 25°C early autumn I was now experiencing.

The city's border of the Alps on three sides and a lake on another makes for some stunning views, and also makes me realise just how badly Cambridge lacks both mountains and lakes. If you're reading this, @visitcambridgeofficial, please take note. The other thing which immediately jumps out at you is that this country is insanely expensive. So much so that in the end I walked to France to go to the supermarket.

I have a few friends from my undergraduate degree who are doing PhDs at CERN, so luckily I wasn't being dropped into a foreign city during a pandemic without anyone to see. I met up with some of them at the lake in view of Mont Blanc, and went to a bar afterwards. 

One of many Really Great Sunsets (RGS's) over the mountains & lake

Though on the subject of the pandemic, Switzerland came out of lockdown some time before the UK, so people are all slightly Over It, and the crowd densities I've experienced have been pretty shocking to me, a person who's not seen a crowd in 7 months.

My first week of work brought me in contact with Lina, my direct supervisor who, like me, trained as a clinical medical physicist. She then made the switch to academia by doing a PhD at CERN. I spent the first half of the week in an undergraduate radiation lab doing some simulations for the radiation protection aspects of The Project, as well as getting familiar with the software available. Having previously only calculated radiation shielding requirements by hand or using a spreadsheet, making a 3D model of an experimental apparatus felt like science fiction. And indeed more mind-bending because all the instructions were in French, and my A-level knowledge of French (which I took 7 years ago) was being pushed to its limits.

I spent the second half of the week* working at the medical school where I was continuing with the results of my simulations, and performing some calculations for the MRI part of The Project. Not being a specialist MRI physicist myself, this required some considerable revision, which luckily reminded me how much I enjoy the physics involved in MRI (even if it's a bit confusing and abstract).

The coming week at work should involve moving The Experiment out of one lab, and reassembling it in another, so as a kinesthetic learner I'm hoping this will really cement my understanding of what the experiment is.

*Thursday was a bank holiday in the Canton of Geneva, and since I couldn't find any advice telling me not to, I took a day's trip with Luke (a friend from undergrad) to the gorgeous lakeside city of Annecy. It was a last-minute decision, which meant we foolishly forgot to bring swimming trunks. But undeterred, we seriously viewed some medieval architecture, had a walk round the lake, and had une bière fraîche at a riverside cafe.

Yes we both, independently, bleached our hair in lockdown, and what of it?

In the meantime I'll be enjoying the weekend which promises to stay in the mid-high 20s. 

It's really rather nice here.

Credits for minor editing of this blog, and inspiration to write a blog at all, to Eleanor. Credit for correction of SPaG (spelling punctuation and grammar) errors to my sister Sarah.