University of Manchester, United Kingdom
When I’m not doing physics, I play folk music and I dance. When I travel places, I don’t go without my violin. It’s funny, because it’s such an intrinsic part of me, I forget that not everyone knows that I play – I feel like it’s written all over me. I was standing at the home of the ProtoDUNE detector at CERN when I got into a conversation with some colleagues who had been chatting with someone I jam with. They asked if I had my violin, and I said, ‘Of course, it’s back where I’m staying.’ And he said, ‘Do you want to bring it in tomorrow and give us a concert?’ I brought my violin in the next day, and I was thinking as I was cycling in that I really hoped they weren’t joking, because I wasn’t! I didn’t want to disturb people or make a big fuss about it, so I felt a bit shy. At lunchtime, when no one was working, I got suited up and went inside the ProtoDUNE cryostat and played for my friends. Wearing the cleanroom suit to play was very warm, but it was really cool to hear the acoustics. It was amazing – it was like my two worlds collided. I was playing music inside of a particle detector.