Sergio, from Colombia, is completing a PhD on the LHCb Collaboration at CERN through the non-Member State PhD Studentship. His research focuses on heavy flavour physics and particularly, the production of charm and bottom quarks.

Sergio was just entering university when the Higgs Boson was discovered and as a first-year student of physics, he remembers very clearly the excitement of Peter Higgs and François Englert being awarded the Nobel Prize.

He came across heavy flavour physics later in his university career, which is what his current research on the LHCb Collaboration at CERN is focused on. His studies explore the polarisation of baryons (what happens when they spin).

The measurements of these polarisations are important because they help refine theoretical models of the strong force and improve calculations at the LHCb, while also serving as key inputs for future studies, including measurements of the dipole moments of Lambda and cascade baryons.

Overall, he has enjoyed the experience, which has been made particularly special by having a good working group and supportive supervisors. He is feeling motivated to continue pursuing academia and at some point, he would like to return home and encourage other Colombian students to pursue the same path.

On the importance of this kind of research, he says:

“Human curiosity doesn’t need to have a motivation behind it. Human curiosity is something we have been pursuing it since the dawn of man. A lot of the time, there wasn’t motivation behind it, it was just sparked naturally. It is important to bring this spirit everywhere. It is what makes us human.”

Lastly, we asked Sergio a very important question: how would you explain your research to a five-year old?

At the LHC, we collide what we call protons – one of the building bricks of everything made in the universe – at very high energies because, that way, they travel very fast and crash together.

Once they crash together, they help us look at an unknown world – parts of the universe we cannot see in our daily life. Charm baryons are one of the types of particles produced in these collisions. They are made from three very small particles that we call quarks. One of these, the heaviest, is the charm quark. They are interesting because they are produced in large amounts in these collisions and help us understand a lot of aspects of how the strong and weak forces behave.

The non-Member State PhD Studentship connects CERN with the world, fostering a new, global research community of talented minds exploring their curiosity right at the forefront of cutting-edge fundamental research. It is supported through external donations.