But the detector is extra difficult than you would possibly assume. “The detector is made up of many different layers,” she explains. “We often describe it as an onion.” At the middle, there’s a tracker that tracks the particles passing by way of it. Then the calorimeter measures the power that the particle loses because it travels, usually by stopping the particles, and the particle-identification detectors establish particles, normally by measuring their mass.
It’s on the first layer, the guts of the detector, that Dr. Nellist’s pixel detector, which is a part of the ATLAS experiment at CERN, is available in. “The pixel detector is the very first layer that the particles pass through, the very first detecting layer, and so it has to be incredibly precise in terms of the space where we’re measuring where these particles have gone.”
This is one place the place absolutely the success of the Large Hadron Collider works in opposition to scientists—the variety of particles passing by way of the detector is extraordinarily excessive, however every of those particles causes harm to the detector. “We have a friendly competition that the better the accelerator operates, the more quickly our detectors degrade. And so we have to design newer versions that can handle the increased radiation damage.” It’s a continuing technique of designing and upgrading for each robustness and sensitivity. “What we want to do is make the most robust design that is also still operating very quickly and very precisely,” she explains.
She hasn’t forgotten her love of English although, and she nonetheless makes use of her expertise for language by way of her science communication work. She’s particularly recognized for her movies on TikTok and Instagram. “Science communication is a way to make sure other people get to be exposed to the kind of work we’re doing and get to ask questions and not be made to feel silly about it,” she explains. “Because everybody started from somewhere where they didn’t know what was going on.”
“I had opportunities because of my parents and that kind of thing,” she continues. “I want to be able to give other people the opportunity to find out what we’re doing.”
Photograph: Ankita Das
Why This Kind of Work Matters
At this level in her profession, Dr. Nellist’s work has shifted extra towards knowledge evaluation than constructing detectors—she now research high quarks. “Despite being discovered in 1995, there’s still a lot we’re learning about them, and they might be able to help us understand what dark matter is.” She can be an assistant professor of physics on the University of Amsterdam.
Her enthusiasm for her work is palpable. “What I really love about the work that we’re doing is that there are many, many technological advancements that come from it,” she says. “We’re not planning on them at the beginning. It’s just the fact that when you put thousands of people together who are curious and want to design the best detectors or accelerators or ways of processing the data, then a bunch of new advancements come along. And because it’s CERN, we don’t patent anything. It’s not designed to make money. We just publish it.”
From medical know-how to communications developments to the web as we all know it, it’s just about unattainable to record each single invention and innovation that has come from CERN or the group’s knowledge.
“I love the fact that even though I’m not working specifically on that, I get to feed into and support innovation that is going to help people live better lives.”