Last blog of the year

After my great succes of my talk in Geneva I ofcourse went back in the cleanroom that same weekend to work a bit more... However the week before christmas I had a great excuse to not be in the cleanroom for a little while!
Each year, at the last days before the institute closes, the annual meeting is organised at NIKHEF. All the groups inform the rest of the institute of the work they have been doing. On behalf of my group sct-chick Caroline told everyone about the great progress we've been making with the endcap. Check out these awesome pictures a professional photographer recently made in our cleanroom and which Caroline used for her presentation:

Anyhow, after the talks were finished, it was time for the NIKHEF christmas dinner! Long tables filled our usual coffee room, so that there all the people who have been working hard on their experiments all year could rejoice together while enjoying the French buffet and the various alcoholic beverages... Technician's were made happy! The Antares punks were roaming the building to check if no one was making fun of their detector (and it's apparent succes in detecting fishes) And ofcourse many hungry phd belly's were filled...

Looking back on this year I enjoyed myself a lot: throwing parties, going to summerschools and conferences, teaching the public about physics, teaching at the university, making simulations etcetera!
Ofcourse I've mostly been busy building the sct-endcap. But now it is almost finished and next year me and most of our group will be in Geneva integrating the thing into the rest of the ATLAS-detector. Will it work? Will we ever see real data? Will the higgs particle be discovered?
I'm afraid you will have to wait for the answers. This afternoon I am flying to Buenos Aires where I will spend my new year in summertime! Happy new year and thanks to everyone who was interested in reading my blog! Bye-bye!

Comments

[Geplaatst door: Oscar Koeroo]

Hi Maaike,

I'm just wondering about colors the professional photo's of the endcap in the cleanroom...
Where do these fancy colors come from? These picture look so cool!

ps: I'm the one sitting in the far back next to Jeff :-)