Greetings from the Hanseatic City: The Hamburg “summies”. Photo: DESY, Christian Mrotzek
It’s summer – not a bad one either, going by Hamburg standards – and the summer students are back on campus! At least some of them are. After a cancellation in 2020 and one year of a very restricted hybrid summer student programme, a total of 84 students from around the world are taking part in this years’ DESY summer student course either in person or remotely. It’s a very diverse group, notes Olaf Behnke, one of the main organisers of the summer student programme in Hamburg.
The students spend 7.5 weeks working on real research projects with DESY supervisors from different research areas, including particle and astroparticle physics, photon science and accelerator physics. Lectures are part of the programme as well, but as per input by previous summer students, who wanted to work on their projects, the number of lectures has been reduced to three per week. This leaves more room for proper research. “The new setup is working out really well,” says Behnke, “it has really proven its worth.”
Students could choose from some 90 different research topics in different categories from many walks of DESY science in Hamburg, Zeuthen and at the European XFEL. Ever wanted to characterise digital cameras for beam diagnostics? Try your hand at real data from the Belle II experiment? Get functional cellulose-lignin coating on porous materials underway or work on machine learning techniques for laser-plasma acceleration? These are just a few examples of the many different hands-on research experiences possible in this year’s programme.
The “summies”, as they’re fondly referred to by the organisers, come from all over the place. Students from Jordan, Ecuador, Malaysia, Norway, Thailand and 30 other nations are part of the group. “The atmosphere is very comfortable and one can feel that the supervisors are really willing to teach us how a research group works,” says Alain Verduras Schaeidt from Spain, who is working in the particle theory group. “And apart from the research we also have the opportunity to enjoy other activities– it´s both, summer and school during our summer school.”
