Working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland

I worked as a Research Assistant for Professor Michael D. Sokoloff at the Physics department in the University of Cincinnati. Through this, I got the opportunity to work as a software developer and data analyst for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). CERN is one ofthe world's largest and most respected centers for scientific research. I, along with my team, worked to create a software for a device called the Upstream Tracker which is currently being incorporated in the Large Hadron Collider (LHCb) experiment. My eight months with CERN were the best eight months of my life where I got to learn so much working alongside the best minds in the world.

I got the opportunity to actually go to the CERN facility at Geneva, Switzerland, and work there with all the scientist who were working on the Large Hadron Collider experiment. I had the first-hand experience to see the workings of a global research institute and learnt so many things there. Apart from working on software development, I had the opportunity to work with the team which was actually assembling the whole device and learnt a lot about cabling, assembly and how the software that we design is implemented in real life. At the end of my co-op, my team and I successfully developed the software for the Upstream Tracker which CERN then registered in our names. It is now being incorporated in the LHCb experiment. I had the honor to network with a lot of amazing people who dedicated their life to research and science, and my supervisor and the team I worked with at CERN gave me a letter of recommendation and invited me to come back to them whenever I felt ready. I will cherish that as one of my biggest life accomplishments probably forever.

Working at the biggest research lab in the world was an overwhelming experience for me. Working with the scientists who literally authored books that I read, the scientist who were involved in discovering the 'God particle', working with everyone I heard about in classes and in books and journals and research papers made me realize that I was a part of something so much bigger than myself. Once you step inside CERN, it's a whole new world, a whole different world, and all people think and talk about in there is science revolutionizing the world. The spirit to invent something or discover something or to just gather as much knowledge as possible is so strong that you are overcome by the wave of innovation. That wave changed my perspective possibly forever. It made me realize that I can be a part of bigger things, that I can bring in the change I want to see, and that I can contribute to the world too and that is all that I want to do now on. Being a computer scientist, I had the mindset that once I had a stable 9-5 job, I'd consider myself successful. But now, I want to be part of challenges, of innovations, and of a new generation that will pave the way for unbelievable technological advancements.