Inside the belly of CERN | Eleanor Dobson | TEDxZurich

The LHC project at CERN has hit the headlines in the last couple of years. Everything on the big detector projects such as ATLAS is of a colossal scale from the fundamental nature of the science being done through to the size of the collaborations themselves. But comparatively little is said about the individual experience of the scientists -- does the day-to-day life on ATLAS match up to the hype? Ellie Dobson gives her take on her experience of being involved in this huge endeavour, and asks whether there are any lessons that can be learnt in other disciplines from the collaborative scientific spirit that has been fostered at CERN.

Eleanor Dobson, CERN fellow
Ellie Dobson spent most of her early life planning to be a musician but did a rather unexpected u-turn at the age of 18 and after a brief foray into teaching ended up reading physics at Oxford University. She was awarded her PhD in 2009 in particle physics, and currently works as a CERN fellow. These days she can mostly be found hunting particles in the ATLAS detector as part of the LHC project, and will soon embark on a Marie Curie fellowship in affiliation with University College London.

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