Profile
Savannah Clawson
My CV
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Education:
I went to school at Queen Elizabeth’s School in Crediton, Devon (formerly called Queen Elizabeth’s Community College) from 2007-2014. I did my GCSEs and A-Levels there. I did my undergraduate degree in physics (with integrated master’s) at The University of Manchester, graduating in July 2018.
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Qualifications:
2010-12: GCSEs in all three sciences, astronomy, mathematics and statistics, as well as art, French, English, and world issues.
2012-14: A-Levels in physics, maths, further maths, and geography (plus AS-Level chemistry)
2014-18: Master’s degree in physics (MPhys)
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Work History:
In my summer holidays, I used to work as a climbing instructor at a children’s summer camp. My job would often involve me getting to sit at the top of a tree for the day when I was manning the zip-wire.
I was lucky enough to have a summer internship at CERN during my time at university, although I actually worked as a nuclear physicist (shhhh). Funnily enough, I really disliked my project but I loved the atmosphere at CERN so much that I decided I wanted to be a particle physicist instead!
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Current Job:
PhD Student at the University of Manchester (currently based at CERN)
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About Me:
I am a PhD student in experimental particle physics with the ATLAS detector (but read more for things that aren’t physics-y)
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Read more
I currently live in Switzerland and work at CERN – the home of the Large Hadron Collider. When I’m not working at CERN, I’m based at Manchester University, where I get to work with Brian Cox who was one of my idols growing up and I credit his TV shows for getting me into physics, so that’s pretty cool! When I am not doing physics, I enjoy action-packed activities like skiing and climbing – I love going on adventures and discovering new places. Living in Switzerland is great but I really miss my two dogs, Mylo and Hazel, who live in Devon with my mum.
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Read more
I work for the ATLAS detector, which is really really big! One of my favourite facts about it is that it is as tall as 5 giraffes and weighs nearly as much as the Eiffel tower! My job is to search through all of the data that comes out of ATLAS to try to find specific particles and events that are interesting to us. I do this mostly by writing lots of code to analyse the data and do fancy things with it, then we as humans can interpret the results as physics.
You might have heard that scientists at the LHC are normally trying to see what happens when we collide protons (or rather, the particles that make up protons, called quarks and gluons) together at really high energies. Whilst this is true, I actually study what happens when we collide particles of light together instead – these particles are called photons, not to be confused with our proton friends.
The nice thing about studying these interactions is that (in principle) we still have two intact protons left over and it is also possible to detect these further along the LHC ring. I do some work on a special set of detectors designed to find these protons, called the ATLAS Forward Proton detectors. The name “forward” comes from the fact that these protons are travelling along the beam pipe (the forward direction) and therefore the actual ATLAS detector can’t see them!
We believe that these processes should be very rare with our current understanding of how physics works. However, some clever theorists have worked out that there are other models of physics (Beyond the Standard Model) that could make these processes much more likely to happen. Therefore, we want to study these processes accurately to see if they behave as we expect, or if there’s something new going on. I think most physicists (including me) hope that we see something new because that’s far more exciting!
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My Typical Day:
Wondering why none of my code works…
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Read more
Like most people, my typical day has changed quite a lot during 2020. I used to spend my days on the CERN site, working in my office, having meetings with other scientists, and meeting friends for coffee. Nowadays, I have to work from home a lot more than before. Thankfully, I am able to work from home very easily as all I need is my laptop and a good internet connection!
The work I do involves writing computer code to try to figure out what sort of physics processes we can see in the data that is collected by the ATLAS detector at CERN. It is very rare that my code will work the way I want it to the first time so I spend most of my day trying to figure out what went wrong, often asking my colleagues for help. One of the great things about what I do is that I am constantly working with people from all over the world so you never run out of people to chat to.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would use the money to expand the ATLAS virtual visits program in the UK, including the possibility of taking virtual visits to festivals in the future.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Determined, outgoing and (sometimes) stroppy
What did you want to be after you left school?
I originally thought I was going to be a graphic designer
Were you ever in trouble at school?
My tutor would always tell me off for not following the school uniform rules
Who is your favourite singer or band?
I can't pick one favourite but I like indie electronica music
What's your favourite food?
Can't beat a good pizza
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
1. To be able to travel the world. 2. To contribute lots to the world of science. 3. To have lots of dogs
Tell us a joke.
Where does bad light end up? In a prism.
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