The Madrid of Manuela Malasaña and Clara Campoamor. The one with Cortylandia and the bocatas de calamares. The Madrid in which Lucía, an experimental physicist specialized in particle detector development, was born and raised.
There she studied a degree in fundamental physics and a master’s degree in biomedical physics. In 2013, as a good tightrope walker, she moved to Nantes (France) to do her PhD, and after four years of le crachin Nantais she became a CERNie.
Lucía works as a Project Associate with the Institut de Radiophysique from the CHUV, located in Lausanne (Switzerland). She is part of a women’s section: 7 – 3 for women. Lucía, who plays as goalkeeper for Scrambled Leggs, CERN official women’s football team, is delighted to see that more and more women are becoming acknowledged in science.
She is passionate about medical physics. That is why, when she grows up, she would like to continue working in this field to be able to develop new devices that can help people improve their quality of life. Also, to show others the scope of science beyond books and formulas.
Because there are realities that escape formulas. Like the happiness of Sunday mornings, when haste does not attack and coffee can be taken in bed. Like an ordinary evening surrounded by loved ones, a good racion de croquetas and a very cold beer.
Lucía’s formula is made of small achievements. Among them, the first time she left home to start a new adventure in a foreign country, getting her PhD, creating her small international family, keeping her childhood friends despite the distance and pursuing her personal and professional dreams.
But it is also made up of little pieces from the past: the family, the playtime with her nephew, the sore of belly and cheeks from laughing with friends, travelling and the music festivals.
At the end of the year (and, what a year!) Lucía will leave CERN. She will start working full time at the CHUV. As Aslándticos sing, she will continue to walk the tightrope, the one that, day by day, she masters.
Because as Clara Campoamor said, from her exile in Lausanne, “freedom is learned by exercising it”.