Sun on the summit Reculet on the Jura mountain
Duke undergraduates Siyuan Sun and Zongjin Qian flew to Geneva June 2 to work at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN until July 28. Their work is funded by a 2010 Dean’s Summer Research Fellowship.
“It is a very exciting time here for particle physics with the LHC up and running,” Sun says, “but that also means a ton of work. I have been involved with the Z prime and W prime searches. Even as an undergrad, you can do quite a bit of work that directly contributes.”
His advisor Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal says, “He is contributing to a search for new fundamental forces which might reveal themselves at the high energies of the LHC. He has been attending meetings and has already given a presentation on his research.”
In his free time, Sun enjoys running on nearby trails and recently completed a two-day hiking trip in the Jura mountains in the Alps. View other photos of his time at CERN here.
The quest for understanding often leads physics researchers and students to the far corners of the world. This summer, Horacio Carias, graduate student at Duke Physics, spent five weeks in Cyprus and Israel studying electron tunneling. He participated in an international symposium, spent untold hours doing research, and still found time to ride a camel and visit the Pyramids.
Ariana Minot, a senior physics and mathematics major from Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, spent nearly three months at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN this summer, observing the paths of sub-atomic particles and the working habits of high-energy physicists.