Alumni get an insider's view of CERN

In mid October over 100 alumni and guests gathered in Geneva, going behind-the-scenes at CERN, where many staff, students and alumni are based.

Some of Imperial’s most eminent physicists were on hand to meet alumni and their guests, including Professor Sir Tejinder (Jim) Virdee, a key figure in the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Emeritus Professor Sir Tom Kibble, central player in the Higgs story, also dropped in during the lunch break to speak to alumni including a number of his ex-students.

The event was organised by the Imperial College Club of Germany, an alumni association whose yearly meetings have taken place in locations across Europe. The activities started on Friday 10 October and finished up on the Sunday afternoon, with the group making the most of informal networking opportunities at some of Geneva’s famous restaurants and bars.

For most alumni, the main focus was the events at CERN on the Saturday, which kicked off with a series of presentations in the prestigious Council Chamber. A welcome from the President of the Imperial College Club of Germany Miranda Bellchambers was followed by a historical view of CERN by Dr Mick Storr, who works in the educational team. He explained how the research facility was founded in 1954 by 12 European states, and has since grown to its current standing as one of the world’s foremost research institutions with 21 member states from around the world contributing funds.

Dr Mick Storr showing alumni a model of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment

Dr Colin West (Bsc Physics 1960, PhD 1965) was among the alumni present. He noted that he was the first Imperial student to have been placed at CERN, and gave a short presentation on his time there. He pointed out a number of changes, including the huge increase in facilities where there were once green fields. He also said he had lived in an apartment block in which his upstairs neighbour was the Nobel Prize laureate Professor Jack Steinberg. Find out more about Colin’s research and see some of the historic images he presented.

The morning concluded with a lecture on the medical applications of CERN research from the facility’s only biologist, Professor Manjit Dosanjh. Her overriding message was that the style of collaboration established at CERN set a good example for other large science projects. “Everyone has their own way of looking at things, and sometimes you can’t see the wood from the trees”, she said. “You need original, creative thinking, which happens when people collaborate, and I think that the CERN model is an excellent way to achieve that.”

Imperial’s own Professor Virdee was the afternoon’s guest speaker. His talk provided a fascinating insight into the operations of the CMS experiment, which he leads, and which he said was first conceptualised on a piece of A4 paper with two colleagues. He praised the leadership of Imperial for allowing him to be based at CERN for so long, and said “subsequent Rectors and Heads of Department have been enormously understanding by allowing me 18 years leave of absence!”

In the afternoon, Professor Virdee led half the group around the underground CMS experiment [pictured left], while the remainder of the group were taken to a number of the surface facilities, which included a visit to the control room. There alumni learnt that CERN has its own firefighting team who are specially trained to deal with the site and the experiments, and they also saw the rows of champagne bottles which exist as reminders of announcements of major discoveries.

Miranda said, “We decided to run our annual meeting in Geneva this year because it was a great opportunity to celebrate 60 years of Imperial research at CERN. The highlight of the weekend has been the turnout, the amazing variety of alumni that came from all different corners of the world – Russia, Greece, the UK, Germany, Holland, Spain, Belgium, - you name it, they’ve come. We’ve also got people who are engineers, scientists, doctors, computer scientists and business leaders.

Professor Jim Virdee speaking to alumni

“It was of course brilliant to meet Sir Jim Virdee and a very nice surprise when Sir Tom Kibble turned up! And we’ve already made plans for next year. The majority of people have opted for Vienna, so we’ll be going there on 10 and 11 October 2015 and we’ve got some great ideas for things to do, like visiting the headquarters of the UN, or OPEC, or the Atomic Energy Authority. And of course, sampling the wiener schnitzel!”

See a slideshow of images from the day

See all the images (photo credit Samuel Rubio), or a selection of images taken by alumni over the weekend.