I woke up in the morning and suddenly realized that it was my first day working at CERN! I smiled, “it is going to be awesome!”. In this first day, I needed to do entrance formalities, such as creating CERN badge, completing administration documents, Then, I had to find and greet my supervisor who I would work with for two months. I hoped, at that day I would also be introduced to all of the members of my lab.

I waited for the shuttle from CERN Saint Genis Hostel to CERN Meyrin Site. Then, I head up to CERN main building where the inauguration took place. The committee of the CERN Summer Student explained a lot of things, such as our agenda, the rules that must be obeyed, and some exciting activities that made me impatient to experience them all. The committee also asked all of the summer students to get know each other although at 5p.m. there would be a welcoming party for all summer students.

In the next part, I will categorize all of my activity during CERN Summer Student 2014 thus they will not be written in chronological order. It will be very long if I keep writing them in chronological order. I will keep posting more images for that particular activities and I hope you will enjoy it. Last, I should apologize if some of the images were taken using my smartphone camera which was not very good compared to my DSLR because at that time it was not appropriate to take image using my DSLR which will produce some noise that can distract others.

The committee had prepared some series of lectures specially designed for all summer student. The lectures were started from July 1st, 2014, until August 7th, 2014 during working days at 9.00a.m. until 1.00p.m. It took place at the CERN Main Auditorium, the same auditorium where the announcement and celebration of the discovery of Higgs boson took place two years before. In fact, I could still smell the celebration, the moments when all of their hard work paid off, discovering the unknown in nature.

Each day, there was three sessions of lectures and a session of Q&A at the end of all lectures. Most of the lectures talked about particle physics, standard models and beyond, particle collider, and technology behind the experiments. Although my background was not related to particle physics, I could still enjoy it. The lectures opened my eyes to the world smallest than an atom and what they did with LHC. It was probably the most expensive experiment in human history just to answer a question what the fundamental particle was. My favorite lectures were about LHC data acquisition, high-performance computing, and their experiments system.

Below, you can find recorded lectures during my stay as a summer student at CERN in 2014. It is very nice to know that they have archived the video and presentation slide. (Right-click on the link and choose open in new tab for your convenience).

• [2014-07-21] Peter Mattig, SM Physics at Had. Colliders (3/4)
• [2014-07-21] Boris Kayser, Neutrino Physics (1/3)
• [2014-07-21] Boris Kayser, Jamie Boyd, Peter Mattig, Discussion Session
• [2014-07-22] Jamie Boyd, From Raw Data to Physics Results (3/3)
• [2014-07-22] Peter Mattig, SM Physics at Had. Colliders (4/4)
• [2014-07-22] Boris Kayser, Neutrino Physics (2/3)
• [2014-07-22] Boris Kayser, Jamie Boyd, Peter Mattig, Discussion Session
• [2014-07-23] Constantinos Loizides, Heavy Ions (1/3)
• [2014-07-23] Oliver Bruning, Accelerator Physics Challenges for the LHC Upgrade (1/1)
• [2014-07-23] Boris Kayser, Neutrino Physics (3/3)
• [2014-07-23] Boris Kayser, Constantinos Loizides, Oliver Bruning, Discussion Session
• [2014-07-24] Constantinos Loizides, Heavy Ions (2/3)
• [2014-07-24] Paolo Ferracin, Superconductivity and SC Magnets for the LHC Upgrade (1/2)
• [2014-07-24] Alberto Ribon, Simulation of Particle Interaction in a Detector (1/1)
• [2014-07-24] Alberto Ribon, Constantinos Loizides, Paolo Ferracin, Discussion Session
• [2014-07-25] Constantinos Loizides, Heavy Ions (3/3)
• [2014-07-25] Paolo Ferracin, Superconductivity and SC Magnets for the LHC Upgrade (2/2)
• [2014-07-25] Erk Jensen, RF Systems for the LHC Upgrade (1/1)
• [2014-07-25] Constantinos Loizides, Erk Jensen, Paolo Ferracin, Discussion Session
• [2014-07-28] Daniel Schulte, Future Collider Technologies (1/2) Linear Machines
• [2014-07-28] Paris Sphicas, Search for BSM Physics at had. Colliders (1/3)
• [2014-07-28] Manjit Dosanjh, Radiobiology of Particle Beams (1/1)
• [2014-07-28] Daniel Schulte, Manjit Dosanjh, Paris Sphicas, Discussion Session
• [2014-07-29] Daniel Schulte, Future Collider Technologies (2/2) Linear Machines
• [2014-07-29] Paris Sphicas, Search for BSM Physics at had. Colliders (2/3)
• [2014-07-29] Timothy Gershon, Flavour Physics and CP Violation (1/4)
• [2014-07-29] Daniel Schulte, Paris Sphicas, Timothy Gershon, Discussion Session
• [2014-07-30] Magdalena Kowalska, Nuclear Physics (1/3)
• [2014-07-30] Timothy Gershon, Flavour Physics and CP Violation (2/4)
• [2014-07-30] Paris Sphicas, Search for BSM Physics at had. Colliders (3/3)
• [2014-07-30] Magdalena Kowalska, Paris Sphicas, Timothy Gershon, Discussion Session
• [2014-07-31] Magdalena Kowalska, Nuclear Physics (2/3)
• [2014-07-31] Timothy Gershon, Flavour Physics and CP Violation (3/4)
• [2014-07-31] Ugo Amaldi, Particle Accelerators in Cancer Therapy (1/2)
• [2014-07-31] Magdalena Kowalska, Timothy Gershon, Ugo Amaldi, Discussion Session
• [2014-08-01] Magdalena Kowalska, Nuclear Physics (3/3)
• [2014-08-01] Timothy Gershon, Flavour Physics and CP Violation (4/4)
• [2014-08-01] Ugo Amaldi, Particle Accelerators in Cancer Therapy (2/2)
• [2014-08-01] Magdalena Kowalska, Timothy Gershon, Ugo Amaldi, Discussion Session
• [2014-08-04] neil lambert, String Theory
• [2014-08-04] Patrick Janot, Physics at Future Colliders (1/2)
• [2014-08-04] Michael Doser, Antimatter in the Lab (1/3)
• [2014-08-04] Michael Doser, Neil Lambert, Patrick Janot, Discussion Session
• [2014-08-05] Ruth Durrer, Introduction to Cosmology (1/3)
• [2014-08-05] Patrick Janot, Physics at Future Colliders (2/2)
• [2014-08-05] Laura Covi, Astroparticle Physics (1/3)
• [2014-08-05] Laura Covi, Patrick Janot, Ruth Durrer Zimmermann, Discussion Session
• [2014-08-06] Ruth Durrer, Introduction to Cosmology (2/3)
• [2014-08-06] Laura Covi, Astroparticle Physics (2/3)
• [2014-08-06] Michael Doser, Antimatter in the Lab (2/3)
• [2014-08-06] Laura Covi, Michael Doser, Ruth Durrer Zimmermann, Discussion Session
• [2014-08-07] Ruth Durrer, Introduction to Cosmology (3/3)
• [2014-08-07] Laura Covi, Astroparticle Physics (3/3)
• [2014-08-07] Michael Doser, Antimatter in the Lab (3/3)
• [2014-08-07] Laura Covi, Michael Doser, Ruth Durrer Zimmermann, Discussion Session

Summer Student Research Project

During my stay at CERN, I was working on ATLAS collaboration. ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus), is the biggest particle detector at CERN. As I said before, during my stay, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was in long shutdown. The long shutdown was intended to upgrade the LHC, particle detectors, and any experiment equipment in between so that the experiment could run on higher energy. For ATLAS itself, one upgrade was to construct a new pixel sensor called Insertable B-layer (IBL). The IBL would be installed between existing pixel sensor and smaller radius beam pipe.

To handle this new pixel sensor, the new front-end ASIC was developed. It required new off-detector electronics that would handle the data acquisition. These new off-detector electronics consisted of two VME-based boards called the Back-of-Crate (BOC) and Read-Out-Drive (ROD). By the beginning of summer 2014, the new BOC and ROD marked a new milestone in the production process. Both of them will undergo series of stress tests to find out its functionality and reliability. So, my main concern was to do low-level test both ROD and BOC module by developing an efficient and effective test pattern generator.

I was working mainly at ATLAS Pixel Lab (Building 304) which was located inside the CERN Meyrin Site. Sometimes, I went to the SR-1 building across the Rue de Meyrin where the new ROD and BOC were tested and the weekly meeting was conducted. My supervisor was Mr. Marcello Bindi. He was very nice and kind. I was really glad to meet him and talked everything with him. I will talk about my research project on the separate article. In short, I really enjoyed this project and I wished that I could extend my stay at CERN.

Summer Student Webfest Project

CERN Summer Student Webfest is a hackathon festival that was annually held during summer. I thought that it was really good to have another side project during my stay at CERN. On this Webfest, I was joining Prof. Ben Segal for his project in volunteer computing. It was very interesting for me. The idea of this project is almost the same as Folding@Home project. They gave the name for this project LHC@Home.

People around the world can participate in the program by donating their unused computer power at home to run some jobs, such as processing data acquired from LHC experiments. The server will distribute a chunk of job for each volunteer that install special client software on their computer. Then, this job will be run on the volunteer computer. After finished, the client software will send the result back to the server and request another chunk of job. So, imagine there are thousands of volunteers joining this programs. Maybe someday, the simulation of an experiment at LHC will run at the same rate as LHC produces the data of it.

The challenge for this Webfest was, to build a new, slick, web based system for the client software. The client software must be compatible with any operating system (Windows, UNIX, MacOS, etc) and any popular web browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc). The web-based solution will give an easier approach for the volunteer to join this program only with several clicks. At the end, hopefully, more people would be attracted to this program and donate their spare computer power for research at LHC. I will talk about this project on the separate article.

The next article will be about other exciting experience at CERN! I will talk about a tour of CERN and some workshop during CERN Summer Student that I had taken.

to be continued…