CERN Courier – July-August 2019

CERNCOURIER

CERN COURIER JULY/AUGUST 2019 47

PEOPLE

CAREERS

CERNCOURIER.COM

CERN has 65 years of history and

more than 13,000 international

users. The CERN Alumni Network,

launched in June 2017 as a strategic

objective of the CERN management,

now has around 4600 members

spanning all parts of the world.

Alumni pursue careers across many

fields, including industry, econom-

ics, information technology, medi-

cine and finance. Several have gone

on to launch successful start-ups,

some of them directly applying

CERN-inspired technologies.

So far, around 350 job opportu-

nities, posted by alumni or compa-

nies aware of the skills and profiles

developed at CERN, have been pub-

lished on the alumni.cern platform.

Approximately 25% of the jobs

posted are for software developer/

engineer positions, 16% for data

science and 15% for IT engineering

positions. Several members have

already been successful in finding

employment through the network.

Another objective of the alumni

programme is to help early-career

physicists make the transition from

academia to industry if they choose

High-energy networking

to do so. Three highly successful

“Moving out of academia” events

have been held at CERN with the

themes finance, big data and indus-

trial engineering. Each involved

inviting a panel of alumni work-

ing in a specific field to give candid

and pragmatic advice, and was very

well attended by soon-to-be CERN

alumni, with more than 100 people

at each event. In January the alumni

network took part in an academia/

industry event titled “Beyond the

Lab – Astronomy and Particle Phys-

ics in Business” at the newly inau-

gurated Higgs Innovation Centre at

the University of Edinburgh.

The data challenge

The network is still in its early days

but has the potential to expand

much further. Improving the num-

ber of alumni who have provided

data (currently 37%) is an important

aim for the coming years. Knowing

where our alumni are located and

their current professional activity

allows us to reach out to them with

relevant information, proposals or

requests. Recently, to help demon-

strate the impact of experience

gained at CERN, we launched a

campaign to invite those who have

already signed up to update their

profiles concerning their profes-

sional and educational experience.

Increasing alumni interactions,

engagement and empowerment is

one of the most challenging objec-

tives at this stage, as we are compet-

ing with many other communities

and with mobile apps such as Face-

book, WhatsApp and LinkedIn.

One very effective means for

empowering local alumni commu-

nities are regional groups. At their

own initiative, members have cre-

ated seven of them (in Texas, New

York, London, Eindhoven, Swiss

Romandie, Boston and Athens) and

two more are in the pipeline (Vienna

and Zurich). Their main activities are

to hold events ranging from a simple

drink to getting to know each other

at more formal events, for example

as speakers in STEM-related fields.

One of the most rewarding

aspects of running the network

has been getting to know alumni

and hearing their varied stories.

Two years since it was established, the CERN Alumni Network is proving a valuable careers resource,

especially for young physicists who move out of academia, write Laure Esteveny and Rachel Bray.

“It’s great that CERN values the

network of physicists past and

present who’ve passed through

or been based at the lab. The net-

work has already led to some very

useful contacts for me,” writes for-

mer summer student Matin Durrani,

now editor of Physics World maga-

zine. “Best wishes from Guyancourt

(first office) as well as from Valenci-

ennes (second office) and of course

Stręgoborzyce (my family home).

Let’s grow and grow and show

where we are after our experience

with CERN,” writes former techni-

cal student Wojciech Jasonek, now a

mechanical engineering consultant.

After two years of existence we

can say that the network is firmly

taking root and that the CERN

Office of Alumni Relations has

seen engagement and interactions

between alumni growing. Anyone

who has been (or still is) a user,

associate, fellow, staff or student

at CERN, is eligible to join the net-

work via alumni.cern.

Laure Esteveny and Rachel Bray

CERN Office of Alumni Relations.

research

higher education

computer software

information technology and services

financial services

government administration

management consulting

internet

mechanical or industrial engineering

telecommunications

defence and space

electrical/electronic manufacturing

semiconductors

aviation and aerospace

computer and network security

< = 20

21–25

26–30

31–35

36–40

41–45

46–50

51–55

56–60

61–65

66–70

71–75

76–80

81–85

86–90

04200 00 6001800 000

age range of members

other fields

(71)

in decreasing order:

Variety CERN alumni by employment sector (left) and the age range of members (right).

CCJulAug19_Careers_v4.indd 47 28/06/2019 08:54

OPINION REVIEWS

CERNCOURIER.COM

46 CERN COURIER JULY/AUGUST 2019

“From my vast repertoire ...” is a rather

peculiar opening to a seminar or a lecture.

The late CERN theorist Guido Altarelli prob-

ably intended it ironically, but his repertoire

was indeed vast, and it spanned the whole of

the “famous triumph of quantum field the-

ory,” as Sidney Coleman puts it in his classic

monograph Aspects of Symmetry. There can

be little doubt that a conspicuous part of this

triumph must be ascribed to the depth and

breadth of Altarelli’s contributions: the HERA

programme at DESY, the LEP and LHC pro-

grammes at CERN, and indeed the current

paradigms of the strong and electroweak

interactions themselves, bear the unmistaka-

ble marks of Guido’s criticism and inspiration.

From My Vast Repertoire ... is a memorial

volume that encompasses the scientific and

human legacies of Guido. The book consists

of 18 well-assorted contributions that cover

his entire scientific trajectory. His wide

interests, and even his fear of an untimely

death, are described with care and respect.

For these reasons the efforts of the authors

and editors will be appreciated not only by

his friends, collaborators and fellow practi-

tioners in the field, but also by younger sci-

entists, who will find a timely introduction

to the current trends in particle physics, from

the high-energy scales of collider physics

to the low-energy frontier of the neutrino

From My Vast Repertoire ...

Guido Altarelli’s Legacy

By Stefano Forte, Aharon Levy and

Giovanni Ridolfi (editors)

World Scientific

masses. The various

private pictures, which

include a selection from

his family and friends,

make the presence of

Guido ubiquitous even

though his personality

emerges more vividly

in some contributions

than others. Guido’s

readiness to debate the relevant physics issues

of his time is one of the recurring themes of

this volume; the interpretation of monojets

at the SPS, precision tests of the Standard

Model at LEP, the determination of the strong

coupling constant, and even the notion of

naturalness, are just a few examples.

While lecturing at CERN in 2005, Nobel

prize-winning theorist David Gross out-

lined some future perspectives on physics,

and warned about the risk of a progressive

balkanisation. The legacy of Guido stands

out among the powerful antidotes against a

never-ending fission into smaller subfields.

He understood which problems are ripe to

study and which are not, and that is why he

was able to contribute to so many concep-

tually different areas, as this monograph

clearly shows. The lesson we must draw from

Guido’s achievements and his passion for

science is that fundamental physics must be

inclusive and diverse. Lasting progress does

not come by looking along a single line of

sight, but by looking all around where there

are mature phenomena to be scrutinised at

the appropriate moment.

Massimo Giovannini CERN and INFN

Milano-Bicocca, Italy.

Signatures of the Artist

By Steven Vigdor

Oxford University Press

MC Escher’s 1941 woodcut Plane-Filling Motif

with Reptiles depicts two tessellating tetra-

pods, one black and one white, with inter-

twined legs and feet on the adjacent sides.

Reflect the image horizontally and vertically,

and the result is a photo negative: maximal

parity violation. A black–white transforma-

tion – charge conjugation in the metaphor

that inspired Steven Vigdor’s book – and, as

in nature, we return to the original. Well,

almost. We can tell the difference from the

position and colouration of Escher’s stylised

initials in the corner. The only imperfection

is the signature of the artist.

Vigdor’s idea is that such deviations from

perfect symmetry are not in fact “bugs”,

but are beautiful and essential. In the case

of CP violation – an essential ingredient in

Sakharov’s baryogenesis recipe – the art-

ist’s signature is indispensable to our very

existence, and the sub-

ject of a glut of searches

for physics beyond the

Standard Model.

Taking no position on

the existence of a creator

artist per se, Vigdor’s aim

is rather to complement

books that speculate on

new theories with an exposition of the “pains-

taking and innovative” efforts of generations

of experimentalists to establish the weird

and wonderful physics we know. His book is a

romp from quantum mixing to the apparent

metastability of the vacuum (given current

measurements of the Higgs and top masses),

with excursions into cosmology, biology and

metaphysics. The intended audience is univer-

sity students. As they cut their way through a

jungle of mathematical drills in 19th-century

physics, many lose sight of the destination.

Cheerful and down to earth, this book offers

an invigorating glimpse through the foliage.

Mark Rayner CERN.

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