Question: Who introduced you to STEM?

Kathryn Coldham answered on 14 Nov 2018:

The first time I was introduced to STEM was by studying science and maths at Primary School. I also had an excellent physics teacher during Secondary School who always made lessons really interesting. But it was when I was 13 years old that the machine I now work on, called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), started up. This is a big, ring-shaped machine near Geneva, Switzerland, that smashes particles together at speeds close to the speed of light! This recreates conditions from just after the Big Bang, enabling scientists to find new particles and helps them to also learn more about the ones that we have already found.

Seeing the media coverage about the LHC starting up and reading about the LHC was a massive inspiration. It was from that point that I knew I wanted to become a particle physicist. It was when I was 17 that I decided to apply for a work experience placement to work on the LHC. I had zero research experience at that time (I was just a sixth form student and I am from a working class background) and no one in my family is a scientist. So I decided to send out lots of emails with a CV and a cover letter (which is a bit like a CV but is written more like a letter and links your experiences to the job you’re applying for). This email was forwarded to a physicist who went on to supervise my placement in the following summer! So it was that physicist who introduced me to what working in research is like, starting my career at CERN. We are still in touch and he gives me lots of advice, so I see him as a role model.

There’s actually a video about my first work placement at CERN, if you’d like to get more of an idea about what it’s like to do a work experience placement there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2zOOoM5BOg

Feel free to ask anymore questions, happy to answer them! 😀