Welcoming international students to Switzerland with S3P3

Ah, summers in Switzerland. They beckon with clear lakes, mountain peaks and hikes through stunning scenery. Ah, internships and work placements. Science careers tend to take off when you gather real research experience and get to know people working in your future field. And when both elements combine, they promise to be a life-changing event… Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you the Swiss Summer Student Particle Physics Program ( a. k. a. σ³ π³ for physics lovers)!

For the second year in a row, Swiss institutes have gotten together to invite students from abroad to spend their summer at Swiss institutes, working on research projects. In 2024, the programme’s first year, individual institutes welcomed six students from Europe offering research projects focused on collider physics. This year, with a newly instated centralised organisation team consisting of researchers from ETH Zurich, the universities of Bern, Geneva and Zurich as well as EPFL Lausanne, it was eleven students from ten countries all over the world. Reminiscent of summer student programmes at laboratories like CERN, Fermilab or DESY, the students apply with a motivation letter and letters of recommendation. The Organizing Committee later invites the best students for an interview on their previous research experience. Finally, selected students spend two months working on their projects that this year also covered topics like dark matter or neutrino physics and detector development.

“I worked on performance studies for different vertex detector layouts for the Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee) in Florencia Canelli’s group at the University of Zurich,” says Mohamed Ahmed, a student from Egypt who is currently studying for an MSc in Poland. “It was very interesting to see the strong connection between layout choices for the detector and engineering aspects such as powering, cooling, and mechanical support. This helps us to better understand how FCC-ee vertex detectors can be improved beyond current concepts. I was lucky to work on this interesting project this summer, as future colliders will shape the direction of particle physics, and we may be the next generation of researchers in this field. I am enthusiastic to pursue a PhD in particle physics very soon.”

The driving force behind the S3P3 is Luigi Marchese, CMS researcher at ETH and Fermilab. “When I think back to the beginning of my career I realised that all good stuff in physics starts with a research internship,” he recounts. “You don’t only get to know different projects, you also get to know many people. For a successful career, you need people who believe in you. I thought that we also need to give this opportunity to the next generation.” He reached out to different principal investigators at different Swiss institues and met with a lot of enthusiasm as well as financial support from SCNAT and CHIPP. After a careful start in 2024, the group decided to go big and fully international in 2025. This was also met with a lot of enthusiasm: they received nearly 400 applications for the 11 positions.

Pilar Lopez Maggi, who comes from Argentina, and studies for her Master's in Physics at the University of Buenos Aires, heard about the programme from a colleague. She worked on a crystal calorimeter for the PIONEER collaboration at the Low Energy Particle Physics group at ETH Zürich in Anna Soter’s group. “My summer project involved various tests being done on these crystals. This included running optical simulations which will help to optimise their light collection, doing various bench tests at ETH and participating in a beamtime at PSI,” she says. “My strongest memory of this summer in Switzerland will be some intense but also very interesting days working at PSI with the PIONEER team, and exploring Switzerland with the other summer students who were based in Zürich.”

Because the students were based in different institutes and cities throughout the country, they had to get organised themselves to get together as a group. However, the S3P3 culminated in a day of project presentations and partying where all students got together one final time. Elena Muñoz Rivas from Santander in Spain had joined Laura Baudis’ group at UZH, simulating electric fields for the Xurich III dual-phase xenon time projection chamber. “By far, my strongest memory will be the warm welcome and the sense of being genuinely received and integrated into the group, as well as the friendships I made with other students in the Summer Student Program. Another unforgettable moment was winning the Best Talk award, something I honestly did not expect given the very high level of all the presentations.” It was Elenas first visit to Switzerland, and everyday efficiency and friendliness, beautiful landscapes and chocolate have made a lasting impression on her. “This summer has been very inspiring for me, both academically and personally. I can imagine myself working in an international collaboration like this in the future. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to participate in the S3P3 programme: it has been a great learning experience and a strong motivation for my future development.”

“We will definitely continue the programme,” Marchese summarises. He and the other organisers hope to include even more research topics in next year’s edition.

Barbara Warmbein