Prajita Bhattarai, who hails from the Himalayan Nation of Nepal, is one of the 3 recipients of the ATLAS PhD Grant 2020. Growing up, Prajita was always drawn towards particle physics so it’s only natural that it became her lifelong dream to work at CERN one day.

She spent the summer of 2019 working on her first physics measurement of the properties of Higgs Boson. And now, with the help of this grant, she will be able to spend an entire year at CERN.

What attracted her the most was not just the fundamental research, but also the culture where people from all over the world worked together, sharing a common goal.

“The ATLAS Ph.D. grant has given me a chance to reach my full career potential. And for this, I will always be grateful to the donors, the selection committee and my advisor”

Prajita is currently working on the measurements in which four energetic leptons (electrons or muons) are produced in the collision of two protons. Being in close contact with the experiment, the analysis team and the experts of the field has exponentially increased her learning pace.