As a six-year-old, I read the Uncle Albert books, and I’ve been fascinated by science ever since. I’ve watched the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures each year on TV, so I jumped at the opportunity to attend Kathryn Coldham’s lecture at the Ri about the CMS detector at CERN, and I was thrilled when, after the lecture, I had the chance to talk to her about her work both at CERN and as a STEM ambassador.
The Ri has a great enthusiasm for bringing the public and scientists together to share their interests, so it was amazing to be sat in the lecture hall, and according to Kathryn, it was even more amazing to be on stage. “To speak at the Ri was an absolutely incredible experience and a complete honour. One day I was volunteering with the Royal Institution in 2022 when we had a social event at the end of a family fun day. That’s when I got talking to one of the producers who worked there. He then asked if I wanted to give a lecture at the Ri, and the rest is history! I have to pinch myself as it still doesn’t feel real that it happened. I will always be grateful to the Ri for the incredible opportunity!”
Kathryn has become a role model in her role as both a STEM ambassador and volunteer at the Royal Institution, not to mention her frequent presentations in schools. “I love making pupils aware of a whole new career option that they might never have heard of before,” she told me. “Most of the schools I have given talks at have pupils who do not have scientists in their families, which was the case with me. I really like helping them to become aware of what particle physics is and to provide them with the opportunity to ask questions. I have received lots of imaginative ones, like, ‘Can we build a particle accelerator in outer space?’” But being a STEM ambassador doesn’t necessarily need an inherent skill at public communication. “I first became interested in science communication as a teenager. I was quite shy and I eventually decided I wanted to try to overcome it by gaining more public speaking experience. That led to me finding the STEM ambassador website online. The programme is very flexible, so I sign up to express my interest in volunteering for an activity whenever I am free to. I really like the flexibility it gives and the chance to be creative, as I completely write my own talks. Being a STEM Ambassador and volunteering with the Royal Institution helped me to learn what worked and what didn’t work for different audiences.”
It can be difficult to decide which aspects of a subject are your favourites, particularly as physics has such a wide range, from the study of the very small, including the standard model and particle physics to the study of the very large, including cosmology and astronomy, but Kathryn says she was always quite definite on what she wanted to do. “The LHC started in 2008 and there was a huge buzz in the media about it. That was the first time I became aware of what particle physics was and about CERN. I later studied particle physics as part of my A-level physics course and I was very fortunate to do work experience at CERN when I was 17 years old. That was when I knew I wanted to become a particle physicist!”
Work experience at CERN is a phenomenal thing to achieve, but Kathryn told me that she just sent emails to people who worked there, on the basis that if the worst came to the worst and they weren’t interested, she could always just delete the email and pretend it never happened! This can-do attitude was very evident when I asked her what advice she would give to her seventeen year old self. “I think I’d advise myself to trust my gut feelings. There are many lovely people working in physics but, like any workplace, there are unfortunately some people who act upon their biases. Just be yourself and ignore them! I particularly found that things were tough at the PhD level. Doing a PhD is not like internships, and that can be due to people’s interactions rather than the work itself. If you’re unsure, it might be worth delaying starting a PhD until you’ve found a good fit. There are lots of good groups out there, so it’s worth taking the time to find the best fit for you!”
Estimates suggest that only 20% of Physics PhDs are completed by female students, although this percentage is slowly increasing, and the overall number of PhDs has massively increased. “It is very important for young women looking to enter physics to have role models,” said Kathryn, “as it can be a challenging workplace environment to navigate. That’s why mentoring programmes can be particularly helpful at the early stages of a career in physics so that people can get the advice they need, when they need it.”
Although the LHC was widely popularised as a collider made to find the Higgs Boson, there have been many advances since the famous discovery in 2012. “For example, we’ve discovered additional ways that the Higgs can decay to other particles. We have also made more precise measurements of things like the mass of the Higgs. There have also been discoveries of different combinations of particles being produced alongside each other, like 4 top quarks for example, and advancements in detector technologies. It will be exciting to see what will happen in the High-Luminosity LHC era, the upgraded version of the LHC!”
Life at CERN never stands still, and constant improvements are being made to the methods of collecting and analysing data. I asked Kathryn about her contributions to the trigger mechanism, used to reduce the amount of data which scientists have to analyse. “I have contributed to the development of a type of artificial intelligence algorithm, called an ‘anomaly detection’ algorithm. Whenever protons collide and produce other particles in the LHC, we call it an “event”. The anomaly detection algorithm identifies very rare events, so that the CMS detector can then save the information about the particles in those events in the form of data. The algorithm I contributed to is planned to be added to the CMS trigger system, which contains multiple algorithms that decide which events to keep or discard.”
Although direct uses for the Higgs Boson and other exotic particles may be hard to find, the mere act of gathering physicists with different specialities can lead to developments as world-changing as the World Wide Web itself, originally developed by Tim Berners-Lee while he was working at CERN. With CERN turning seventy this year, who knows how this incredible organisation might change the world in the future?
