Meet the YSC members involved in our newcomers' tours!
I am an outdoor- and snow-oriented physics PhD student from Latvia. I have a great enthusiasm for equations and physics modelling. My PhD project is linked to testing if the top quark mass is indeed equal to the anti-top quark mass. I hope my work and, moreover, my everyday relationship with people can make a positive impact on people’s lives.
Antra Gaile – Tour Guide
My name is Ansar Iqbal, and I hail from Pakistan. After acquiring a PhD from KIT Germany, I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher with the University of California, Los Angeles, and contributing towards CMS physics analyses. In my free time, I like to travel, play sports, and compose arts and poetry.
I joined the CMS YSC a couple of years ago and I am its current chair. For me, the thrill in working with the YSC comes from being able to work together with my passionate colleagues for the welfare of our young peers in CMS. There is something magical about coming up with ideas of how to help others, and then see them going from humble beginnings to having a significant impact. With my colleagues, I have worked on numerous such activities, discussions, and surveys. In addition, I have contributed towards outreach of our committee, and increasing the visual appeal so that more young people get interested, and join us in our efforts.
I am glad to be part of this wonderful group of people, and plan to continue to contribute to the amazing work the YSC is doing.
My name is Charlotte Cooke and I am a third year PhD student at both the University of Bristol and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The bulk of my PhD work is on the Phase II ECAL barrel upgrade, specifically on writing and testing firmware to cluster energy deposited in the ECAL which will form part of the so called trigger primitive information. I also do some test beam work for this too. My analysis focuses on looking at high energy electron pairs in the search for Z’->ee
Christopher Brown – Tour Guide
I am a 3rd year PhD student at Imperial College London but am based at CERN. My work is focussed on the Hi-Lumi upgrade of the CMS Level-1 Trigger and am split between writing track finding firmware and developing a machine learning approach to primary vertex finding. I am a very recent member of the CMS YSC and am looking forward to getting involved and helping out any of the new members of CMS with the many different aspects of being part of the collaboration and being out here at CERN
My name is Fengwangdong Zhang. I am a postdoc affiliated with UC Davis and based at CERN. I joined the CMS YSC in 2015, and I became the secretary from 2016 to 2019. I gave a presentation on behalf of the YSC during the CMS induction school in 2018, and I co-organized the ice-cream workshop with the LHC early career committee in the same year. I was enjoying those activities with a lively atmosphere and interesting topics being discussed. Since 2020, I’ve been an advisory member. I am so excited to see more new young faces join our committee who come up with more ideas to make our committee more active and attractive. I also like to share my experience or ideas with the new committee team as well. I believe this committee is a good platform for young people within the CMS and/or the whole LHC collaboration to make social activities besides research, and an important contribution to the CMS outreach team.
I am a Doctoral Researcher at Brunel University London and my research focuses on a rare mechanism predicted to produce a top quark, called tZq production in dilepton final states. I also contribute to firmware work for the Phase-2 Tracker upgrades. I was a Monte Carlo contact for the CMS Top Group and I have previously contributed to work on strip hit resolution measurements for the CMS Tracker.
I have been a member of the CMS Young Scientists Committee since September 2020 and I have served as its Deputy Chair since September 2021. I came up with the idea of the newcomers' tours as a way of helping CMS members based at CERN to settle in.
Additionally, I have been involved in the creation and analysis of a YSC survey. I have co-organised YSC Job Matching Events (September 2020, Spring 2021, Autumn 2021 and Sping 2022), the YSC virtual socials, the LHC Early Career Scientist Fora's Soft Skills Workshops (March 2021, June 2021 and June 2022) and the LHC Early Career Mentoring Programme. I also contribute to increasing the visibility of our committee; this includes creating and being the main moderator of the YSC Facebook and Twitter accounts, writing a Cylindrical Onion blog post about our committee and I gave a presentation on behalf of our committee during the CMS Induction Course in March 2021. I am the former YSC representative for the CMS Internal Communications Working Group, which aims to improve internal communication within our collaboration. I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting and working alongside other YSC members and advisory members to help meet the needs of the untenured members of our collaboration.
Outside of work, I enjoy training in taekwondo at a local club in London and, when I was based at CERN, I trained with Taekwondo CERN. It's great fun!
I am a Doctoral Researc
her at Imperial College London and I am currently based at CERN. My thesis is on the Acceleration of trigger algorithms with FPGAs at the LHC implemented using higher-level programming languages. I enjoy being a member of the YSC and have co-moderated the CMS YSC Job Matching Events in Autumn 2021 and Spring 2022.
