Summer at CERN is special with the PPC. We usually have a flock of undergraduate students going to CERN to perform research with our group. The students are mostly funded through the MISTI and the IROP (international UROP) programs and the numbers fluctuate throughout the years. Recently due to our stronger outreach and the ‘marketing’ efforts we have been able to attract a rather large number of students. Last year and this year we had five and completely maxed out the budget and office space we have. They are young and often very inexperienced but boy, can they climb a steep learning curve.
We have a large variety of projects that we can offer from standard CMS analysis to FCC analysis studies to test beams and silicon detector studies. The interests vary a lot and we have been able to accommodate everybody so far. This week there was a MAPS workshop at CERN and I spend a few more days at CERN to see how the students were doing. It looks like they are in great spirits and make excellent progress on their assigned projects and make use of the European contintent… Last weekend some went to Barcelona and reported their trip with all adventures at the dinner we had in Luiga, the Italian restaurant where we go on occasions like this.
Next week the students have their midterm presentations and I am already looking forward what new things they have learned. The final report will be after the first week of August and I am sure we will have a lot to talk about.