: – By Aditya Raj
By the time we left Geel, we already had a bag full of patience, hard work, dedication and of course plenty of knowledge in microelectronics and radiation. Now, it was the time for RADMEP rangers to march for their chosen specialization track. Although most of the rangers went to Montpellier to tighten their hands in radiation on microelectronics, a quartet was ready to dive into the ocean of radiation and photonics at UJM in Saint Etienne. It was a nice bright day of September we were warm welcomed by our professors and coordinator. That would be called a perfect back to school as it called in French “La Rentrée” after a long vacation of two months. Although for most of us, we utilize this holidays in most productive and scholastic way by indulging ourselves either with summer internships or learning something new by our own. Since some of us were living together in Geel, we used to gossip whole evening sharing cultures and interesting facts about our home and usually talk ends with an agreement to start our day tomorrow with some early morning physical activities but as undoubtedly we only smiled in morning dreams as if participating in 2024 Paris Olympics.
Coming back to our track, our classes started along with PSRS (another Erasmus Mundus program hosted by UJM) and Photonics Engineering students. Most of our courses were related to Radiation on photonics, so photonics classes had to be extended until we have had seen radiation effects on it. Our professors were experts in this field. They taught us the importance of this program with all the research work and projects already been done in this domain. One of my favorite part was the lab sessions. The lab experiments were not only based on basics physics behind interaction of photonic devices with radiation but also indulged all the recent work and studies being done by the group. All the professors and lab staffs were so supportive that they not only provided relevant answer to our questions, but also gave freedom to analytically argue on the topics and come up with the best possible answer out of us. We learnt a great team work and were almost prepared to perform our experiments independently.
The life in Saint Etienne was satisfying and stress free thanks to the perfect accommodation we got and the convenient transportation to almost all the places around the city. Don’t forget to buy the tickets else you could be fined by the authority. The city itself is blithesome, always something happening to participate from trekking in the summer to skiing in the winter. Coal museum is a must watch to explore the history of the city. There are pretty good restaurants and pubs in the city to enjoy you evening time. You can even join language exchange events organized every week to engaged yourself with some quality time and making new friends. Just to let you know that you can even have your lunch at the university restaurant at a very reasonable price. Talking about the food, I wanted to give special thanks to Amélie Genvrin for arranging an international lunch day for all of us. The food from all over the world was in front of us on the table to taste and it was an amazing experience.
The autumn was about to end in no time, and we could see golden yellow leaves lying on both sides of our path. To me, it felt like I had entered into a scene from a Bollywood movie starring Shah Rukh Khan. I cannot resist myself to write some lines on it. Below is a paragraph of my poem originally written in Hindi language but translated in English by a young poet and my school friend Jayant Kashyap.
“ This love knows no boundaries, knows grace;
we’ve seen green leaves yellowing, turning to gold.
This small town in the midst of mountains
has seen us writing our stories, our images anew. ”
The winter had arrived and now it was our time for much awaited CERN visit to participate in SERESSA 2022 school as a pre-scheduled one week workshop in this RADMEP course. We had another opportunity to see the beautiful smiles of our colleagues from Montpellier. Apart from this, the lectures from the experts of radiation community was totally outstanding. For some of us it was like one in lifetime experience. In addition, we got a golden opportunity to connect with experts from all over the world. It was like day spending to grasp knowledge from brilliant speakers and spending evening with lots of talks about future plans and internship opportunity. Since it was the FIFA period , I still remember an evening at the CERN restaurant where Professor Girard and my friend Nahid Hasan engaged in a warm conversation about the upcoming matches, while we enjoyed their friendly banter in defense of their respective favorite teams. The school ends with a social dinner and we came back to Saint-Etienne to complete our remaining classes and semester end exams.
At this point of time, we already knew our internship places and people were ready to fly to different parts of the world to explore new shades of their life. I will also write about the experience during my internship for master’s thesis in the upcoming blog. Till then stay connected and don’t forget to write me if you like this blog or wanted to share any feedback. Thanking you.
master-radmep.org 