Hear it from our beneficiaries

With a new edition of the CERN Beamline for Schools Competition (BL4S) just around the corner, we hear back from one of last year’s UK winners, Max Raven.

In 2016, Max was a member of ‘Relatively Special’, one of the two winning teams in the BL4S 2016. Together with his team, he was invited to perform their experiment using the Proton Synchrotron at CERN over the course of two weeks in September. This was quite the experience for him:

“Throughout the duration of my stay at CERN I was surrounded by distinguished scientists and engineers who treated us with respect and maturity. As a student this was both refreshing and appreciated. We were assigned responsibilities for ensuring both the safe operation of the T9 experimental areaas well as the successful completion of our experiment. Working alongside professionals who had an all-around knowledge of the experiment we proposed was extremely useful and I learnt a great deal of new skills.

The abundant opportunities we were afforded during our time at CERN has definitely helped me to decide on my future career as an Engineer.”

Image: Max during the Safety Awareness training on his first day at CERN. (Credits: Markus Joos/CERN)

Max also shared with us fond memories of the collaborations he developed at CERN.

“In my opinion, the most beneficial impact of BL4S has been the strong team-working and communication skills I developed. Every member of the English and Polish winning teams were encouraged to engage in collaborative projects, and we thrived on the friendships that were forged.