• Question: Why do you think that your types of jobs could change peoples life?

    Asked by to Becky, Clara, Daniel, Simon, Thomas on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Thomas Elias Cocolios

      Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Did you enjoy the experience today? Did you know that the WWW was invented to allow scientist from CERN to exchange data and ideas faster? I think that it has had a big impact on people’s lives.

      People from ISOLDE have also equipped all the labs in the Geneva & Lausanne region with the most up-to-date radiography equipment as part of common developments.

      And even if my polonium isotopes seem a bit disconnected, the tools that I need for my work will force new technical developments that will eventually come back to you, like lasers.

      Finally, for every £ invested at CERN, it is estimated that the economy gets 3 times as much back!

    • Photo: Becky Martin

      Becky Martin answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Hopefully my work means that people’s lives don’t change, actually, and that they just stay safe!

      However, my research could result in changes to the emergency planning and management systems that we currently use in the emergency services.

    • Photo: Clara Nellist

      Clara Nellist answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Being a scientist means finding out new things that no one has ever found out before! So hopefully this will mean lots of changes to people’s lives in the future. Some examples of how my research (and that of the people I work with) could do this would be in medial applications. You can make smaller particle accelerators (a smaller version of the LHC) and use them in hospitals to treat cancer tumours. Treating cancer this way means that it is killed faster and the normal heathy parts of the person are not damaged as much, so they get better sooner! Also, the pixel detectors I work on can make clearer images when the doctor wants to take a scan of the brain, or a tumour for example, so this will help doctors make better decisions.

      But there are some things that come out our work that we didn’t think would when we started. Like Thomas said about the World Wide Web, which was invented at CERN 25 years ago yesterday to help scientists to share what they’d learnt. And who knows what we’ll be able to invent once we understand more about the building blocks of our universe! Maybe we’ll understand gravity better and we’ll get flying cars! I sure hope so 😉

    • Photo: Simon Albright

      Simon Albright answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      The great thing about basic research is that it sometimes has effects far outside it’s intended purpose. Even though what I’m working on is aimed at security the same technology can be altered slightly and used to help fight cancer or do basic materials research.

      And obviously my work has changed my life, I have no idea what I’d be doing if I wasn’t doing this but I know it wouldn’t be as good!

    • Photo: Daniel Roach

      Daniel Roach answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      The job I do provides very important information about the way materials are – their physical properties such as their strength, magnetic properties, their chemical reactions and even their colours and smells! With this information, other scientists and engineers can design new materials, use this information to build new technology and create new products and ways of getting things done.

      Imagine how new nanomaterials could be used to create new electronic devices, new drug delivery systems, new fuel cells and batteries and other energy storage systems… This stuff changes everyone’s lives – from the mobile phone in your pocket to the medicines and life-saving operations you have when you’re ill. All of this depends, at least a little and often completely, on understanding and clever application of the physics of materials.

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