An extraordinary opportunity for China's brightest



CERN hosted the 20 Chinese students who won the 'E=mc2 to modern science' Einstein Award during their first trip to Europe.

Hui Liu has travelled 8000 km to visit Europe and commented on her experience at CERN, 'I was very impressed to see the huge detectors and see how they extract the data.' Previously, she had only read about or saw photos of the LHC. Now that she has visited the CMS experiment she hopes to one day work with one of these experiments.

Twenty of the top physics PhD students in China were honoured with the 'E=mc2 to modern science' Einstein Award and received a three week tour of major laboratories in Germany and Switzerland, including CERN, DESY and the Max Planck Institute. The Einstein Award is co-sponsored by the German and Swiss Embassies in celebration of the 'Year of Physics' in 2005. For many years, Germany, Switzerland and China have been involved in numerous areas of scientific research and cooperation.

These 20 students come from various regions of China, including Beijing, Shanghi and central China. Participants were nominated by China's Ministry of Education and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. According to Patrick Freymond, the Swiss Attache of Culture, 50 percent of professors at Swiss universities are foreigners; there is a huge employment opportunity available that perhaps these students would like to explore.

'I feel lucky to have this chance to see the laboratories in Switzerland and Germany. I have worked hard to earn my PhD and now I am looking for the next step to take,' said Yongtao Zhao, one of the new doctorates in particle physics.