Interview Success

I posted earlier with some questions that I would potentially ask a person in my future career field. I conducted and recorded the interview on March 24^th with an MSU Faculty member. I did not conduct the interview with a Mechanical Engineer, but instead a faculty member who took a more theoretical approach in his career. I interviewed Dr. Reinhard Schwienhorst, an experimental particle physicist, who currently teaches physics here at Michigan State and conducts research for CERN (in Switzerland). He is a German native who moved to the USA when he began working on his doctorate at the University of Minnesota (“Go Gophers”). His interest for physics began in 5^th grade. I could not believe it, but when asked about when he became interested in his field, he said, “Well, when I was in 5^th grade, I had this teacher who had us put circuits together using a battery, paper clips, and light bulb. He was a very interesting teacher, engaging, and putting these circuits together had me interested in this sort of field.” So, for those younger teachers out there, you could be the ones who set the tone on a certain field for someone’s life.

His current job is to work on processing the data for the experiments conducted at CERN. He works with a group of six people, just one group formed out of 3,000 people. These 3,000 people report to a group of 1,000 people and then the 1,000 people work for a smaller group. He told me that they are currently working on the 2012 data set. Please note that CERN opened in 2008. It takes these people a long time to go through terabytes upon terabytes of data.

For main part of the interview, I asked him about the communication style in his field. His main form of communication is through presentations, mainly power point presentations. As he attends big/small conferences at CERN and meetings with his six member group, he has to convey findings through speaking. He has to present to his small group, at these conferences, and to the thousand people that he reports to. He uses videos and images to keep the audience engaged. He also has to write reports. He uses a basic logical structure. It goes from the title, the abstract, a thesis with a solid intro, charts, evidence, data, and a conclusion. The evidence and credibility he establishes is through all of the data he collects at CERN. He sorts through the data to find what backs up the experiment, finds evidence that may refute it, and reports it in a standard format. He says that anyone he works with stays away from the use of emotion in his reports as it detracts from the logical direct point of view that scholarly people like to hear and use. The diction that is used displays a higher level of education since the people working on these experiments have a higher level of education.

These reports and presentations and the style they use are very similar to the academic articles that I have researched. The use of credible evidence, lack of emotion, and the logical structure that is used is all very similar. This is similar and different compared to the blogs that I have seen on the internet representing Mechanical Engineering. I have made this comparison in a different post already.

His job field is very interesting. It is not the same direction that I am headed, but it is interesting to see where the next step in a field that can affect mine is going. I did not ask him anything particular on his research, but I do know that at the large hadron collider, physics is making great strides. They have picked up a Nobel Prize and maybe more in the future. I wish the best of luck to those working there and to my old professor, Dr. Reinhard Schwienhorst.