Vava Gligorov

00:00:00 Intro

00:04:20 The LHCb experiment. Fundamental particle physics. Why isn't there as much antimatter as matter? Timescales.

00:17:18 Shortcomings of the Standard Model. Dark matter. The LHC.

00:22:24 The LHCb collaboration. Organization of a scientific experiment beyond the Dunbar number. Carrier development in academia and physics.

00:27:03 The skills and day job of an LHC physicist. The messy organization of a big experiment. Technical vs physics work.

00:32:33 The (lack of) management levers and incentives. 70+ institutes. Where does meaning come from?

00:38:26 Vava's journey from war-torn Yugoslavia through Vienna and Oxford to CERN in Geneva and permanent position in Paris.

00:41:23 Why physics? Curiosity and introversion. The helpers on a hero's journey.

00:45:03 The real-time aspects: how we take the data. 30 million+ proton-proton collisions, a few to 30+ Terabits per second. The real-time trigger reduces the rate by 3-4 orders of magnitude.

00:48:39 Working in a small group. Career without planning in the early days vs students today.

00:51:48 Early adoption of AI and GPUs in the real-time trigger. Separate signal (interesting events) from background (known particles) in a million-dimensional space. Reconstruction cuts it down to 10-20 features where we apply Boosted Decision Trees. Training data and simulation. Neural nets? Sometimes, in complex feature spaces, for example in the calorimeter.

01:01:16 Simulation to real data: systematic uncertainties. How to prioritize what to care about? The soft process and social structure of scrutinizing results. The effect of the aggregated knowledge of the collaboration.

01:09:29 The delicacies of the scientific method: the look-elsewhere effect and unknown unknowns. The soft side of the Popperian ideal.

01:16:46 Who decides what to go after in physics? LHCb: 20 years x 100 PhD thesis is a lot of investment. The role of the critical mass.

01:20:27 The International Linear Collider and the sociology of the next big experiment.

01:24:10 ATLAS = Cathedral. The deep metaphor: multi-generational experiments. The sacrifice of early-career scientists.

01:29:56 Vava's dream for the rest of his career. Survival guilt.

01:36:01 Science at home.

01:39:43 Why the podcast? - Vava's question to me. Spirituality and science. Anger and separation anxiety. This little corner of the internet. Truth and importance: the daily dilemma at the Paris-Saclay Center for Data Science.

I, scientist blog: https://balazskegl.substack.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/balazskegl

Artwork: DALL-E

Music: Bea Palya https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBDp3qcFZdU1yoWIRpMSaZw

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