Dr. Petra Merkel (she/her): Season 2 Episode 3

Season 2 Episode 3   I am an experimental collider physicist, who specializes on detector instrumentation, and I also love traveling, reading, movies, jigsaw puzzles, listening to live music and learning to play the piano. In the past I have been involved in the Higgs boson discovery, but now I specialize on designing and building silicon trackers and on  coordinating generic detector R&D for the High Energy Physics community. I love my research, because it requires a lot of creativity, allows me  to learn something new every day, and leads me to work with a very diverse group of people, who are all extremely good at what they are doing. Snowmass turned out to be a lot of work at a very challenging time during the pandemic, but I feel it is important to help define and shape  the future of our field using my expertise in detector instrumentation.   My Journey as a Physicist is brought to you by PhD student Bryan Stanley (he/him/his) and Prof. Huey-Wen Lin (she/her). Season 2 is edited by Varalee Sakorikar.   Season 2 consists of members of the Particle Physics Community Planning Exercise known as Snowmass.   If you like the podcast or have any suggestions for future improvement, please take a minute to use this form to let us know:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxRDWXM-iJ_IdVAh7ZtrnqjVpajodVMdmA3o3piLAO3u-Jxw/viewform