Mateus Carneiro
Physicist on DUNE near detector
Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States

My interest in science started when I was in 8th or 9th grade. I took chemistry classes and we started talking about the components of matter. I soon realized that if we are to understand everything, we need to start with the fundamental building blocks of things. I love the social sciences and medicine, but they all seem so complicated. If I don’t understand how things are made, how can I understand the big picture? It sounds funny, but particle physics is the simplest thing I could try to understand. Even neutrinos seem to be the simplest particle I could try to study. They interact with one out of four forces, they barely have mass. So I’m trying to understand the simplest thing I can.