Katia Avanesov

Hometown: London, England UK

Three favorite Physics courses and why:

1. Ph129a: Group Theory: it's amazing how you can deduce so much about a system just by knowing its symmetries!
2. Ph125: Quantum mechanics!
3. Ph6: A very enjoyable experience of putting theory into practice.

Labs or projects you have worked in/on during your time at Caltech: I have spent my past two summers at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, as part of a SURF with Professor Harvey Newman's high energy physics group, applying machine learning methods to detect long-lived particles from their signatures in the Large Hadron Collider.

Hobbies outside of academics: Art

Favorite study spot/s on campus: Annenberg and SFL

What drew you to Physics as an option? Physics makes you realize that there's so many questions to ask, even about the most seemingly simple systems!