Christine Hoa (France)
| My name is Christine Hoa, I am 30 years old and I work as a mechanical engineer at the European Organization for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva. |  |
I am 30-years old and graduated from the French engineering school, ENSMA in Poitiers, with a degree in mechanics and aeronautics. I also have a PhD in engineering sciences, with a specialisation in space science. Currently, I am an engineer at the European Organization for Particle Physics, CERN in Geneva.
For several years after my PhD, I worked on the design of satellites which provide television and mobile services to households through Europe. Then I moved to Geneva to be close to the Alps and took on a new job as a mechanical engineer at CERN. As an engineer, you have a huge range of job possibilities!
I am very enthusiastic about my work at CERN. At the moment, I am working on the superconducting magnets for the biggest particle accelerator in the world - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). More than 6000 scientists from all over the world dedicate their time to the accelerator: to build it and to run experiments. It is a big technological challenge and will hopefully open up new discoveries in particle physics. With data from the experiments, we hope to be able to understand more about what our world is made of and how it works. One of the challenges is to learn more about the origin of our universe. It is very exciting to take part in such a big scientific project.
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Paragliding |
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Engineering research is never boring: you learn something new every day as the field evolves through continuous innovation. My time at work consists of reading, running computing models, analysing results with my colleagues, discussing new ideas and, eventually, presenting ideas in meetings and sometimes at conferences. I spend a great deal of my time in front of a computer, with access to the World Wide Web that was first created at CERN for the scientific community. Thanks to computers, you can perform very complex calculation. But engineering does not only involve computation, it also involves a lot of human interaction. Team work is very important. At CERN, you get to know very friendly people from many different countries and cultures. It is a stimulating environment that I really appreciate.
And being an engineer does not mean working all the time! At weekends, I like going to the mountains. I go hiking in summer and skiing in winter with friends and family. I have also learnt to paraglide. It is just fantastic to be able to fly over the beautiful alpine landscape!
Schools:
Collège Clement Guyard Creteil (not far from Paris)
Collège La Roche sur Foron
Collège Montpellier