CERN HST2019 - Day 6

This was an incredible day and one of the highlights of the program!  We started the day with an incredible lecture from Manjit Dosanjh on the medical applications of the work done here at CERN.  She told us about the Medipix chip that is used in high energy particle physics and how they are looking at using it in medical imaging, having just produced the first colour 3D X-ray images using this chip.  She talked about the development of the PET scan at CERN and how the technology used to see the glucose consumption in the human body is exactly the same as that in a particle detector.  She went into the development of a combined CT/PET machine to provide excellent images of the human body for diagnosing cancers.  She then went into the current state-of-the-art intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) that has the ability to attack cancer cells in the body from a variety of directions with minimal damage to surrounding tissue and finished by talking about the future of hadron therapy.  Hadron therapy, especially using carbon ions, can almost completely eradicate cancer cells and needs to be the direction we take in the future of cancer treatment (even though it was first proposed by R.R. Wilson in 1946).  I had no idea that the research being done here has such direct and tremendous implications for the medical field.  It showed that if we invest in these ideas to beat cancer then maybe surgeries will only be done when absolutely necessary, chemotherapy can become a thing of the past, and many more people will survive this horrific disease.

We followed this up with a wonderful talk from David Barney, of the CMS Experiment, and his career at CERN so far.  One of the things that he highlighted was the immense time scale of the projects going on here.  He started here 25 years ago and has spent his entire career working on CMS and will likely one day retire from CMS.  He also said that with the LHC set to run for another 40 years that some of our students may even spend their entire career on one project at CERN.  From his talk, this sounded like an awesome thing as he says that every day is different and new and exciting and fun and throughout his talk you could see how much he loves his job here and his passion for it.  Physicists truly have some of the best jobs in the world!

This afternoon, we had our trip to CMS!!  The scale of this experiment is simply mind-boggling and awe-inspiring!  Here you see me standing in front of the 15m tall, 28.7m long, 14000 tonne CMS detector (note my ultra-cool CMS polo as I stand in front of CMS!).  There is absolutely nothing like being there in person and having the opportunity to tour the facility and see the detector itself!   Even now, I'm having troubles finding the words to describe this part of my day and I think that for someone often as wordy as myself that that says something!

Tomorrow we have our next social event, a treasure hunt around Geneva!  Followed by the official dinner of the HST2019 Programme!  This marks the halfway point in the program and I have to say that I'm a little sad that we're already halfway through this incredible program.  I'll be sure to enjoy every moment that we have left in this program and I hope that one day I might have the opportunity to return.