I have always had a deep interest in physics, with many of my earliest memories being of the National Space Centre in Leicester. I was lucky enough to have excellent and encouraging physics teachers throughout school who had guided me along the path to studying for an integrated master’s degree in physics (MPhys) at the University of Manchester between 2018-2022.
It was whilst at Manchester that I became captivated by particle physics, obsessed with the puzzle of the imbalance between matter and antimatter in the universe. This obsession made the LHCb collaboration a very natural home, and through encouragement by my personal tutor, undergraduate laboratory work, a DAAD RISE internship at TU Dortmund and eventually a master’s project, I was able to become a part of the experiment.
In my time as an intern in Dortmund I fell in love with Germany, and began to consider doctoral study there after my master’s. I was therefore very fortunate that at the time I was applying to doctoral positions the SMARTHEP network opened its application process and a position on LHCb at Dortmund was on offer. I am now based in Dortmund for the network and enjoying every minute of it—in my free time I can usually be found sitting in a café, playing strategy games or travelling the Rührgebiet by train!
