EAST LANSING, Mich. – Katie Yurkewicz, a Michigan State University alumna who serves as science communicator at CERN – the world’s largest and most prestigious particle physics research center – will return to her alma mater to give a seminar.
Yurkewicz’s talk is at 4 p.m. Oct. 27 in Room 1400 of MSU’s Biomedical and Physical Science facility. Her talk is titled “Angels and Demons at the End of the World: Communicating the Large Hadron Collider.”
The LHC, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, is located at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, or CERN, as it is known by its French acronym. The 17-mile long accelerator straddles the border between France and Switzerland.
Yurkewicz, who earned a doctorate in nuclear physics from MSU in 2003, has served as CERN’s communicator since 2006.
In her talk, Yurkewicz will discuss the challenges of communicating nuclear physics to the general population.
“In this seminar,” Yurkewicz said, “I'll discuss communication at the LHC from the last years of construction through the first high-energy collisions, in the process touching on lawsuits, live broadcasts, major breakdowns, long shutdowns, Hollywood blockbusters, God particles and black holes.”
MSU has a number of faculty, staff and students working at CERN. For more information, visit the web at http://news.msu.edu/story/7684.
Yurkewicz talk is free and open to the public. More information on her is available at her blog: www.blogger.com/profile/08160701402958188418.
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