I carried out my Leadership in Action project at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland. I worked with CERN’s Education department and in particular worked on a video with a Theoretical Physics focus for the CERN-Solvay Education Programme. My supervisor for this project was Dr Guillaume Durey, who is a Senior Fellow at CERN, though I also worked closely with many members of the Teacher and Student Programmes team, and engaged with several other projects, including helping out with workshops aimed at second-level physics teachers.

The aim of the CERN-Solvay Education Programme is to get young people interested in physics and in the work carried out at CERN. I was able to bring the perspective of an (aspiring) theoretical physicist to the project - my supervisor’s academic background is far more experimental, and the videos thus far have reflected this. I spent most of my time there developing an idea and subsequently a script for a video that could introduce high school age kids to the theory side of the work they do at CERN and that would hopefully inspire these young people to look further! After writing and editing the script, I also hosted the video. The education programme is freely available online and the kids can follow the video series and engage with questions on the programme website and can even apply to summer camps at CERN after watching the series. Check out the video I made here.

Although I have engaged in educational work before, I had never had the opportunity to do so on such a scale, or to reach such a wide audience. The team I was working with were not only educators, but physics education researchers, so I got to learn lots about the new proposed best ways to communicate the complicated concepts of physics to audiences of various levels. The passion that each member of the team had for education and outreach was truly inspiring. 

This project really enabled me to push myself and do things that are well outside my comfort zone. I experience a lot of anxiety while public speaking, so both helping out with workshops and filming the video were very scary prospects. I managed to do both successfully though, and I now feel far more assured in my ability to teach and present in an engaging way.