Xin Qian
Physicist
Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States

When I was young, I was really inspired by a biography of Albert Einstein. At that point, I didn’t fully understand it, but I was fascinated by the fact that we could understand nature just through logic and thinking. Early in my career, I was making my way toward becoming a theoretical physicist, but I found myself more drawn to technology and experimental technique. For DUNE, I work on event reconstruction and detector optimization. The liquid-argon time projection chamber technology we’re working on is very innovative and challenging. The primary physics goal of DUNE could be the next major discovery of neutrino physics. It’s an open field, one where you can make your mark. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m interested in this. I only started working on liquid argon about four or five years ago. Before that I knew almost nothing about this technology and now I’m a semi-expert. It just goes to show that if you’re interested in something and spend time on it, you can become an expert.