Meet the current and former members of organisational team for our newcomers' tours! Team members are from the LHC Early Career Scientists Board, which comprises: the ALICE Junior Representatives, the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board, the CMS Young Scientists Committee and the LHCb Early Career Gender and Diversity Office.
You can find out even more about them by clicking their names to check out their LinkedIn accounts!
ALICE Junior Representatives
Luca Quaglia
Hi, my name is Luca Quaglia and I am about to finish my PhD in the ALICE group of Torino, Italy. During the past three years I have carried out an hardware-oriented research on the theme of eco-friendly alternative gas mixtures for the Resistive Plate Chambers of the ALICE muon identification system. I have also taken part in the global ALICE data taking at the start of RUN3, both with shifts and hands-on work on some detectors. Since March of 2022 I have been one of the three junior representatives in ALICE (together with Hannah and Carolina). We have the fundamental role of linking the juniors with the whole collaboration, hence we actively organize junior-oriented events and we try to help them out as much as possible!
ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board
CMS Young Scientists Committee
Antra Gaile
I’m Antra, a physics PhD student from Latvia currently based at CERN. As of September 2023, I am the Secretary of the YSC. My work focuses on the development of Detector control and safety system for MTD (a new CMS’s subdetector for Phase-II that will provide additional timing information!), as well as physics analysis within Higgs group. In my free time I enjoy the surrounding region by hiking or simply wandering around. I have joined YSC as I was fascinated by its enthusiastic members and wonderful initiatives, and now am looking forward to contributing myself.
Babatunde Odetayo
I am a PhD student of the Department of Computer Science, University of Benin, Nigeria. I hold a M.Sc. degree in Software Engineering and I'm currently undertaking my Ph.D. research in Cybersecurity. I am at CERN to take part in activities related to the CMS Collaboration and working presently on the Development and Operation of CMS Online System Administration.
Gizem Dinçer
I'm a Master's student at the Near East University, Turkey and I am working on the CMS High Granularity Calorimeter for the HL-LHC upgrades. My main activity in HGCAL is studying their electrical properties of silicon sensors and haxaboards. Most of the time I work at clean room and electronic lab. In the past, I've also been involved in Hadron Calorimeter calibration work. I enjoy very much to work at CERN and my aim is to continue my PhD at CERN CMS experiment. In my spare time I like hiking and cycling.
Irene Andreou
I'm a second-year PhD student from Cyprus, at Imperial College London, currently based at CERN. My work focuses on new physics searches with tau leptons. I am a co-convener of the Tau ALGO group focusing on the development and maintenance of algorithms targeting a better identification and reconstruction of tau leptons. I joined CMS YSC this year and am excited to contribute to the ongoing efforts while meeting new people and helping them settle in at CERN. In my free time, I enjoy reading, listening to music and exploring nature.
Jannicke Pearkes
I am a post-doc with the University of Colorado, Boulder. My research focuses on searches for physics beyond the standard model with unconventional signatures. Before joining CMS in March 2023, I did my PhD on the ATLAS experiment at Stanford/SLAC. During my PhD I focussed on di-Higgs searches and the ATLAS HL-LHC inner tracker upgrade. I’ve joined the newcomers’ tour team because I love meeting new people and introducing them to life at CERN!
Oliwia Kałuzińska
My name is Oliwia Kałuzińska and I come from Poland. I hold my Bachelor's degree in Technical Physics and Master's degree in Optoelectronics, so my background is quite mixed. My first connection with CERN was a one-year Technical Student position in EP department during the master's studies. I came back to CERN, this time as PhD student, affiliated to Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. I'm working on characterization of silicon sensors for CMS High Granularity Calorimeter for HL-LHC upgrade. This includes studying their electrical properties as well as radiation tolerance. During my work I spend a lot of time in the lab, which is always exciting! I spend my free time training Zumba, playing table tennis and swimming in the lake.
LHCb Early Career Gender and Diversity Office
Eliot Walton
I am a joint-PhD student at Monash University in Australia and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. My PhD research focuses on measuring a novel production mechanism for hadrons more than one heavy quark with the LHCb detecor. I am also involved in R&D for a novel particle identification detector called TORCH.
I am also a research associated with the Australian-based non-for-profit organisation QueersInScience (QIS). QIS received funding in 2022 to study the history of queer people's contributions to Science Technology Engineering Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) from the Theo Murphy Initiative (Australia), administered by the Australian Academy of Science. This work is being conducted with the the assistance of the Australian Queer Archive (AQuA). My pronouns are she/her.
Lorenzo Paolucci
I am a PhD student at the University of Warwick, working on the LHCb experiment, and I'm currently in my second year. My main research is focused on Rare B Meson decays, in particular on Lepton Flavour Universality tests, and angular analyses of these processes. I am also one of the two Early Career (EC) Representatives of the Collaboration, and as such my role is to help EC members of LHCb feel a sense of community, as well as organising events (within LHCb as well as in collaboration with the other LHC experiments) catered to young scientists to help them navigate the start of their careers. In my spare time, I enjoy bouldering, make-up, and guiding school tours around some of CERN's main visit sites!
Former Members
Andris Potrebko
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.
Carolina Anna Reetz
I am a PhD student at University of Heidelberg in Germany and I am working with the ALICE group at GSI in Darmstadt. In my work I am focussing on the production of light (hyper-)nuclei in heavy-ion collisions in ALICE. As one of the three ALICE Junior Representatives I am involved in different projects helping Juniors in our Collaboration and thinking about how to further improve our community of young scientists. As a result, I have become more and more passionate about organising all kinds of events to hopefully be able to make a small impact on people's lives.
Charlotte Cooke
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
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.
Emery Nibigira
I am Emery Nibigira, a Post-Doctoral Researcher Associate at University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), based at CERN. I applied for my current position after seeing it advertised in a CMS YSC Job Matching Event (JMEv) in 2021. My research focuses on the search for exotic long-lived particles using CMS detector. I am also working on Tracking detector operation, performance, and upgrades for the LHC Phase-2. I recently joined the CMS Young Scientists Committee (YSC) after they offered me a newcomers’ tour. Now I am glad to take part in the YSC.
Feng Zhang
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.
Guillaume Pietrzyk
I am a postdoc at IJCLab (Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS), in Orsay, next to Paris. I did my PhD at EPFL, in Lausanne, where I worked on charm physics with the LHCb experiment. Now, at IJCLab, I study rare decays at LHCb, where I focus on b->sll transitions. I am quite involved in outreach because I think it is crucial to share what we do with the outside world. I created the LHCb Instagram page and also manage the Facebook and Youtube accounts. Since summer 2022, I am an Early Career representative at LHCb. I love organising events and activities to help the young scientist community.
Hannah Bossi
I am currently a PhD student at Yale University studying jets in heavy-ion collisions with ALICE (though I just defended my PhD, so will be transitioning to a new role soon!). I also serve as one of the ML coordinators in ALICE. Outside of research, I am also passionate about helping juniors navigate the collaboration and I am one of three ALICE junior representatives as well as the junior ambassador for the United States.
Jenny Lunde
My name is Jenny Lunde and I am in my last year of a Master of Physics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. I am currently doing the Technical Student Internship at CERN and I am working on developing the databases and software for the monitoring of the Tracker sub detector at CMS. I recently joined the YSC and have helped with organizing the Job Matching Event Fall 22 (JMEv) and the LHC Early Career Mentoring scheme. In my free time I like to go hiking, snowboarding and traveling.
Katie Walkingshaw Pass
I am a final year Ph.D. student at the University of Bristol. My work is split between different areas of the CMS Phase-2 upgrade, currently, I am writing firmware for one of the modules in the level-1 Track Finding chain, and validating one of the software modules. I am also helping out organising the LHC Early Career Mentoring Programme and the Job Matching Events. I am a recent member and looking forward to getting involved with the YSC.
Kathryn Coldham
I am the Chairperson of the CMS Young Scientists Committee and Head of the LHC Early Career Scientists Fora.
I have been a member of the CMS YSC since September 2020 and 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 a leading organiser of the LHC Job Matching Events, the YSC virtual socials, the LHC Early Career Scientist Fora's Soft Skills Workshops, the LHC Early Career Mentoring Programme and the CMS Coffee with Senior Scientists events. I was Head of the YSC's social media team (2020-2024). I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting and working alongside other YSC members and advisory members to help meet the needs of CMS members who do not have a permanent position.
Outside of work, I enjoy taekwondo, hiking, swimming in Lake Geneva and learning new languages.
Liv Våge
I am a Doctoral Researcher 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.
Milos Vojinovic
My name is Miloš and I come from Serbia. I am a PhD student at Imperial College London and a CERN Doctoral student working on CMS. I hold a BSc degree in Electronics but am now on a Physics programme at my university. Hence, I am trying to specialise where the two worlds meet!
My work is related to one of the technical upgrades CMS needs to undergo in preparation for the High-Luminosity era of LHC operation. Specifically, the replacement of the existing CMS endcap calorimeter system with a novel device - the High Granularity Calorimeter (HGCAL). The tasks I am usually involved in are a mixture of “hands on” work and firmware development. For the former, I perform various tests on a scaled down version of the HGCAL Electronics system (i.e. trigger and event data readout, control, monitoring, etc.). For the latter, I write FPGA algorithms for the HGCAL TPG back-end (i.e. to calculate properties about 3D Clusters).
In my spare time I play an electric guitar, train calisthenics, go to rock and roll gigs and occasionally do a bit of reading.
My greatest impression of working at CERN are the people. Coming from all around the globe, setting all their cultural differences aside, communicating through the universal language of logic and truth and working together towards a common goal - to make the next humble step towards shattering the boundaries of what we know. :)
Olga Gudnadottir
I’m a last year PhD student in ATLAS, working on a search for Dark Mesons. I am based in Uppsala, Sweden and try to travel to CERN as much as I can to strengthen my connection to the amazing community connected to it. In my research work I focus on the Dark Meson analysis, data science and software and computing. I also find value in all types of community building and outreach, such as being part of the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board, teaching and doing outreach events. I am inherently curious about all parts of life and culture and my hobbies and interest tend to change rapidly over time.
Ansar Iqbal
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.
