You are doing a PhD in physics in UCD, how come you are in Geneva at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) for most of this year?
For my PhD at UCD with Prof Ronan McNulty I am analysing data collected at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where atoms are smashed together at high speed to look at particle physics. I have already analysed legacy data that was taken before I started my PhD, and I am going to supplement that with the data I am helping to accumulate.
It has been 10 years since CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, so what has been going on to mark the occasion?
It has been very exciting. There were commemorative talks and big viewing screens with movies. I think what makes it even more special is that we are coming out of a long shutdown, and of course Covid-19 affected collaborators around the globe. But now people are starting to flood back into the area to work, everything is coming back to life.
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What does your work in Geneva involve?
The data comes in around the clock, and I often work the night shift between 10pm and 6am. I watch the screens in the control room and keep an eye on the quality and integrity of the live information coming in from the sub-detectors, watching for anything unexpected. It’s very cool.
The CERN collaboration analyses the data then, to help us understand the building blocks of matter that make up our universe. I will be here probably until early next year because the type of data that gets collected in December is particularly relevant to my own work.
What is your project about?
In the experiments that make up my research, lead ions go through the collider and the LHCb detector picks up information. I’m looking for a rare particle called a rho meson that is formed when the ions pass each other and have a long-distance interaction, a bit like the ions giving each other a wave rather than a high five. I take cross-sections of the data to see how often rho mesons are produced.
What do people tend to ask you about your work?
What I work on is quite niche — even when I explain it to the community in CERN they find it unusual — and more generally particle physics is quite hard to convey anyway as it is counterintuitive. So you have to come up with analogies and other ways to help people understand it.
Sometimes people ask why do this kind of work anyway, and for me it is driven by curiosity. Also, pushing at the boundaries of knowledge involves developing new technologies that then go on to have other impacts — the internet came out of CERN, and their work also helps to improve medical technologies for scanning and cancer treatments.
How did you develop a love of physics?
I grew up in California — my parents are from Ireland — and I had a really excellent teacher in high school, Ms Crowley. She inspired a love of science in me, particularly physics. So I studied undergraduate in the US and then moved to Dublin for my PhD.
Do you think Ireland should join CERN?
Yes, Ireland should become an associate member. There are quite a few groups from Ireland collaborating with CERN on experiments, and associate membership would allow the involvement to grow, including at PhD level. There would be a good return for Ireland on that investment.
