Jen Raaf

I love knowing how things work, and why things are the way they are. In my younger days, I disassembled various items to see how they worked. And when I figured out that particle physics is a way to disassemble the universe in order to probe some of the most intriguing yet-to-be-answered questions, of course I decided that was the path for me! The first time I had the opportunity to work inside the open Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in Japan was amazing. The pictures don’t do it justice. It has the feel of some kind of cathedral when you’re standing at the bottom of a 130-foot-tall structure whose walls, floor, and ceiling are beautifully lined with photo sensors that look like golden orbs.