Author: admin

When Elisa first met CERN, she was around one year old. She was born in a scientist family: her grandfather was a pharmacist and her father works as a physicist. He had the opportunity to come to CERN and Elisa’s family moved from Madrid to Ferney-Voltaire.

Now, 32 years later, she is the one working at CERN, in the Mechanical and Material Engineering group, surrounded by a small big beauty. What Elisa sees and discovers under her microscope amazed her daily. She lives in Saint-Genis-Pouilly with her husband, Luis, who is also working at CERN, and with their daughter, Eli.

It has been almost 5 years since Elisa started working at CERN. 21st May 2015, the day of her PhD defense, while she was having breakfast, Luis, who at that time was just boyfriend, called her: “I have been admitted at CERN”. Elisa defended her PhD embraced by these good news, and having in mind that they were getting married in three months.

It was September 2015 when they arrived here, just after their honeymoon. It was in the middle of it, when Elisa did an interview and got a call from CERN to start as a Project Associate. After two years of PJAS, she got a Fellow in a different group, department and section. It was similar to what she did after her PhD in Solar Energies, when she decided to change completely her field and focus on the materials.

There is another special match between CERN and Elisa’s life story. In 2008, while she was studying her degree in Material Science and Engineering, she had the opportunity to come here for three months to do the final project of her degree. CERN means a lot to Elisa. It hosts a lot of her memories.

She believes that she is who she is thanks to her family, thanks to her father and her mother, who taught her a very valuable proverb: “guarda el orden y el orden te guardará”. Being orderly is one of Elisa’s virtues. She remembers how much this proverb has helped her to find the pillars of her personality.

When she dreams about herself, she imagines a life with her family, in a quiet neighbourhood, if possible, in Madrid, working at University. Also, visiting Galicia, her husband’s terriña, frequently and, making some room for Valencia, where a warmer climate awaits them.

Elisa knows where she wants to go, but she does not run. She prefers to keep the order, because as the Madrid-born poet, Gloria Fuertes, wrote: el que sabe dónde va, / va despacio, / para paladear, / el “ir llegando”. 

It is nice to think that “Little Eli”, who is now the same age that Elisa had when she was living around CERN, and who is also surrounded by scientific relatives, will end up having a CERNie experience.

It is nice to think that coincidences will never have an end.

Almost for two years, Paula, a restless and curious woman from Gijón, worked at CERN, that laboratory that keeps beauty hidden tens of meters underground. It was one the primal incorporations of HiLumi, and she was part of its technical project management department.

This was Paula’s first work experience. She had studied a degree in Engineering of Industrial Technologies at the University of Oviedo (Spain), studying the last year in Berlin (Germany), with an Erasmus scholarship. It was also where she began to find her path because, for her, CERN is a fantastic place to create your own adventure. Now, from Boston (USA), where she has been almost a couple of years, Paula remembers with special affection the two hobbies that accompanied her in Geneva: basketball and classical music.

As during her childhood and adolescence she lived with the court and baggy equipment, as soon as she arrived to CERN, she joined a basketball team, the Meyrin Basket, where she spent the first trainings and games lost in translation. Along with this sport, classical music. Paula, who played viola at a professional level since she was a little girl, joined l’Orchestre des Nations, where different nationalities and families of instruments were mixed.

Basketball gave her, in addition to triples and DOMS, a formidable level of French. Music, in addition to concerts and harmony, brought her a rhythmic love. In the orchestra, Paula met Matt, her current fiancé, who at that time was also doing her PhD at CERN.

In such a special place, where she believes that there are amazing opportunities to look for and to pursue, Paula realized that she wanted to direct her career towards management. Along with her mentor, a great friend and ally, she set her future plans and professional goals.

That is why, after her time at CERN, Paula flew to Madrid, where she worked for two years at McKinsey & Company, an American consultancy firm, of which, at the end of this summer, she will again be part. This time, from across the pond. To join her more technical profile with the field of management, Paula did a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Harvard, which she has just successfully completed.

From that shore of the Atlantic, Paula dreams of dedicating her training, time and effort to sustainability. She believes that the great problem in our society is that we are taking over the world we live in, so she would love to reverse the situation by taking advantage of emerging technologies. This summer, before rejoining as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company, she is collaborating with Peace of Meat, a Belgian startup that, like Paula, is committed to feed the world differently, while protecting the environment.

Paula will continue to contribute grains and grains of sand, so that we have a healthier world. She will keep shaping her career and composing her life with sheet music for violin and viola. And she will not forget her experience as a CERNie, which will always sound like Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

Like Nietzsche, Blanca is a friend of the slowness. Now, from Madrid, she enjoys her own calm in the non-hegemony of the Fast & Furious. Life, like philology, demands above all to distance oneself from the rest, take time, decelerate, and our engineer lives her days on those margins.

Blanca was born at the Mediterranean’s foot, in Mojácar, a city located in Almería (Spain). After studying industrial design engineering in Seville, she worked in the Andalusian capital and also in the country’s one. Years later, she opened a door to England, and from there she jumped to CERN, where she has worked and enjoyed for five years.

She is not currently working. Her stage as a CERNie was very intense, and that is why Blanca has given herself a time of reflection, changes and rest. One way to avoid, in Nietzsche’s words, “the age of the rashness, the indecent and sweaty rush that aims to end everything immediately.” That age, which is ours, which is the Work’s one.

From that stand-by terrace, our engineer takes a look at the most special memories of that time. The disconnection from those yoga classes, which started with four cats in a park in Saint-Genis-Pouilly and grew to full capacity at CERN itself. The sweet Geneva dance academy that kept her in touch with contemporary dance that she has practiced since childhood. And, of course, those rides in a white cinquecento singing sevillanas loudly, like someone celebrating a goal in the last minutes of the game. An oasis within the High Level and the international ties.

That relaxing doses did not occur in solitude. The friendships that Blanca forged at CERN still accompany her, and she speaks, smiling, about the illusion with which they work, about their brilliant minds and their big hearts. She well remembers how excited she was when she arrived to CERN. She felt like a little girl again. It was difficult for her to shrink her smile from ear to ear when, ready for taking the photo for the access card, she was told not to smile that much. How to control so much emotion?

During her five years as a CERNie, Blanca was part of several projects. She started in civil engineering and, later on, she went to do a more mechanical design, an integration design, within the HiLumi team. She made sure that everything fit and that it was in accordance with the project’s requirements. Blanca was the link, the smiling piece that brought together the work of the different teams and departments.

She believes that it is important to find a balance between the personal demands and the enjoyment of the experience to make the most of each coffee and conversation with other CERNies, those more or less random beings who are the most beautiful things in this place. For Blanca, the beauty was in the mix, in the diversity that fitted everything, in the small big family that CERN is.

Blanca dreams now of breadcrumbs, no big loaves of bread. To engage every little wish in her daily life is enough. Go back to work? Yes, but only from a perspective of calm and serenity, because Blanca is a friend of the slow reading of life and, as Nietzsche wrote in her Aurora, reading well is reading slowly.