As this is the first time I’ve done this, you’ll have to excuse me if I stumble a little as I find my way. I wanted to start this blog as a place to collect all of the activities that fill my time (and my twitter feed!). I should probably introduce myself, as I guess that’s what you do in the first post! I’m Clara, I’m a particle physicist and I have the pleasure to be a part of the biggest experiment on the planet: the ATLAS experiment at CERN. I did my PhD in Manchester, UK with the HEP group, but now I live in Paris, France working at the Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire, or LAL for short.
One of the joys of my job is that I get to travel quite a bit, especially to Gevena in Switzerland where CERN is located. Below is a photo taken a couple of months ago when I went 100m underground to visit the ATLAS detector. We can only go when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is shutdown and we aren’t taking data, so you have to take the opportunities to go down when you can!
Me and the ATLAS detector.
I am also a science communicator and enjoy spreading the word about how exciting working in science is. So far, I’ve worked at science festivals, in schools and online to share my enthusiasm! I’ll be posting some more specific details about them in the coming weeks. I’ve also got a few exciting things in the pipeline so they will be announced here too (along with the usual places such as Twitter, Facebook and to anyone who meets me in person!). Speaking of twitter, if you’d like to follow me there you can find me at the very unimaginative handle, @claranellist, or click on the link on the side of the page.
I think that’s it for now. Thanks for reading! If you’d like to let me know a bit about yourself in the comments section, I’d love to know who has stumbled upon this (even if it’s no longer 2014).
Clara
Edit: Thanks to Alex for reminding me that this should, in true programming style, have been called “Hello World!”.
Hello! I’m one of your Twitter followers, so you made this quite easy for us to find. 🙂 I’m a fledgling Ph.D. student in HEP joining the ATLAS collaboration. I’m really happy you’re doing a blog, and I look forward to future posts. Hopefully some really cool ones on life and work at LAL!
Hi Matthew! Thanks for coming over from Twitter :). And thanks for the supportive comments! It was a bit of a leap starting the blog, but I’d been thinking about it for a while now. What are you working on in ATLAS?
Dr Clara Nellist 
Awesome! Working with CERN definitely means you have some cool stories to tell.
Outreach like this is important because it shows people how interesting and exciting the life of a scientist can be 🙂
Hi Michael. Thank you! I agree about outreach being important – CERN is a very interesting place and I’m thrilled to be able to share a bit of it.
Hello! I’m one of your Twitter followers, so you made this quite easy for us to find. 🙂 I’m a fledgling Ph.D. student in HEP joining the ATLAS collaboration. I’m really happy you’re doing a blog, and I look forward to future posts. Hopefully some really cool ones on life and work at LAL!
Hi Matthew! Thanks for coming over from Twitter :). And thanks for the supportive comments! It was a bit of a leap starting the blog, but I’d been thinking about it for a while now. What are you working on in ATLAS?