Articles
Mitchell Woolley
Natural Sciences student completes international internship at leading research center DESY
Mitchell Woolley a Natural Sciences 1st year student had this to say about his three-and-a-half-month research internship at DESY near Berlin:
DESY is Germany's particle physics research center, where physicists probe the structure of matter both theoretically and experimentally using high-energy particle accelerators. As my interests are theoretical, my research involved the mathematical frameworks describing the ‘Standard Model’, or our current way of organizing the universe's smallest building blocks. To do this, I studied Quantum Field Theory, and Group Theory in mathematics, both of which illustrated beautiful symmetries in how fundamental particles behave. The aim of my work was to calculate probability amplitudes of interactions described by Feynman diagrams, to then connect these to the symmetries different particle families obeyed.
During my time spent at DESY I've learned so much about research, how to format research papers using LaTeX, as well as how to model my findings using Wolfram Mathematica, all with the aim of devising a research project that I'll work on and present before coming back to the University of Exeter in September. As a whole my internship experience has helped develop essential tools for success at university, and a research career.
Date: 11 July 2018