2010-07-20-cern-experience.markdown

layout	title	excerpt
post	CERN Experience	Eight week internship at CERN

During the last 8 weeks I worked as a volunteer summer student at [CERN](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN) with my awesome mentor/supervisor [Dr. Ben Segal][ben] and the [CernVM][] team. I continued work of past CERN summer students on [BOINCVM][boincvm] (volunteer cloud computing platform for scientific research based on BOINC infrastructure) by improving code, fixing bugs and testing on Linux, Mac and Windows, using the [CernVM][] virtual software appliance. I also improved server side configuration and administration of a test [BOINCVM][boincvm] project. Read [report](/files/docs/internship-cern-report-2010.pdf); [Attestation](/files/docs/cern-attestation.pdf).

Work aside, I met some amazing people during my time at CERN. Above is a photograph of the office which I shared with 5 other facinating people for sometime before I shifted to another office. My schedule was tight (I had my GSoC too), but I cruised through both of them; my secret was this chart:

Experimental physicist Dr. Archana Sharma helped all of us, the desi student crowd at CERN (thanks a lot ma'am!). Below is a photographic panaroma of Dr. Sharma's house where about 10s of students and few scientists had a desi get-together:

My mentor, Dr. Ben Segal arranged a tour of CERN Computer Centre for us (thanks a lot sir for making that possible!). Below is a photographic panaroma of the server farm;

I was so thrilled to stand next to the NEXT computer that ran the world's first web server, which was written and managed by Sir Tim Berners Lee himself.

Our group photo just outside the CERN Computer Centre:

Bonus video:
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