Just over five years ago, Samer, an electrical engineer, became a HiLumier. Since then, he enjoys the delicate mix of human interaction and technical work at CERN.

He is part of a team made up of people with very diverse backgrounds, something that has helped him grow personally and professionally, and that also keeps him assembled to beauty. The beauty of people working together and achieving something bigger than themselves. The beauty of union.

The challenging technical tasks that Samer carries out on a daily basis often lead him to reopen his university books and notes. And returning to those university years means going back to Toulouse, to its pinkish terracotta bricks, its warm climate, and the taste of a chocolatine.

When Samer was 20 years old, he moved to La Ville Rose to study electrical engineering. After his master’s degree at ENSEEIHT, he did his PhD on “Electric Machine Design and Control” with Renault and right after that, he joined CERN, which was a dream come true.

Samer’s childhood dream was to work on a project that would push the boundaries of human knowledge, even of human capabilities. Now he feels he is part of it. On the list of half-fulfilled dreams is to get more and more involved in environmental projects. He wants to actively contribute to a better future.

“To understand the heart and mind of a person”, wrote the Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran, better known in his homeland as Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, “look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to”.

Samer was born and raised in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, where beauty and chaos combine on the shores of the Mediterranean. Although the city faded a little last August, it did not suffocate from Samer’s memories, which still revive its colourful streets and, as it is said in French, its joie de vivre and insouciance. “We enjoy the day, we never think about tomorrow”, says Samer.

But if tomorrow, “today’s dream” for Khalil Gibran, is to be imagined, Samer does so with optimism. He hopes that in about 10 years we will be living in a more sustainable and harmonious society. And, by then, he also hopes to have witnessed the High Luminosity LHC in operation.

Whatever happens, Samer has already contributed, and continues to contribute, to this large project, and to this today. Besides, and this was not said by Khalil Gibran, “Hilumier once, Hilumier forever”.

In a lost corner of the world, between mountains, is where Marta’s most peaceful place lies. A place of back to the reality, back to the basis, where she charges her batteries.

She was born in Gheorgheni (Romania), a small city located in eastern Transylvania, around 175 km from “Dracula’s Castle”. She spent her first 20 years in Romania, where many of her relatives still live, but she is also linked to Hungary because of her nationality and her culture. During four years, Marta studied mechanical engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and, shortly after, she became a CERNie.

Marta is the Section Leader of the TE-MSC-TF section at CERN. She started to work here as a research engineer, in charge of the superconducting magnet design, the fabrication and the contract follow up for the LHC dipoles. For 24 years, she has been at CERN, where she has developed her whole professional career.

She likes and enjoys what she does. Maybe that is why she finds beauty even in a piece of iron. At the entrance of building SM-18, where visitors await, there is a magnet that Marta recovered from one of the old storage areas. They turned it into a table. She likes that kind of object, those engineering pieces of art.

She has always loved the mountains. Although Marta’s blue eyes were already used to nature, she feels that this particular area, near the Alps, is quite amazing, in terms of landscapes, greenery and peaks. From time to time, Marta fantasizes about climbing Mont Blanc sometime. She still has doubts about it. This may always be one of her pipe dream, her voeu pieux, as the French would say.

Her mom always told her: help yourself and God will help you. A teaching that highlights the importance of self-initiative, and willingness. Marta comes from a quite religious community. She does not believe as they do, but she respects their beliefs. She is always down to earth. Still, this is a lesson that Marta would pass on to her daughter.

In one of his novels, Panait Istrati, a Romanian working class writer, stands up for goodness, saying that the goodness of one single man is much stronger than the evil of a thousand, because evil ends when it, metaphorically, dies, but good is transmitted to others and remains even after it dies. Marta completely agrees with him. She thinks that everything is relative and that if you insist on trying to change everything in a positive way, there is always a positive side in everything. It is a question of trying to see it.

One day, Marta will return to spend more time at those lands that saw her grow, where she used to play without a care in the world. That very lost place with no electricity, water or network. A special corner that is quite difficult, but very satisfying, to reach.

To go back to the roots, one day, because as it is said in one of Roberto Benigni’s movies, “life is not perfect, it is not coherent, it is not easy, it is not eternal, but in spite of everything, life is beautiful”.