"PhD Comics" author Jorge Cham on the power of procrastination

From Tuesday, 22 to Friday, 25 September, Jorge Cham visited CERN. The PHD Movie 2 was screened in the Main Auditorium  and the cartoonist also took part in one of the Researchers' Night events. 

 

Jorge Cham in the CERN Control Centre.

On the first day, the author of the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD Comics) visited the CERN Control Centre, the Synchrocyclotron, the CMS Service Cavern and the ATLAS control room.

On Thursday, he had a busy afternoon, starting with signing copies of his books and then giving a talk entitled “The Power of Procrastination” in a packed Main Auditorium. He made the audience laugh by narrating his experience as a graduate student in robotics at Stanford University, recounting how he started drawing PhD Comics and how it rapidly became popular in universities all over the world. He then analysed the frustrations and anxieties commonly experienced by any graduate student, causing the audience to laugh and nod in agreement. After the talk and another book-signing session, he introduced a screening of The PHD Movie 2.

The next day, he was on stage again in one of the Researchers’ Night events at the Balexert shopping centre: a panel discussion entitled “The PHD Movie vs. The Big Bang Theory”. Together with David Saltzberg (CMS physicist and scientific consultant for the American sitcom), Cham discussed the funny side of science and life as a researcher as portrayed in the film and the show.

by Stefania Pandolfi