Giulia Aricò as a teacher at the 20th FLUKA beginners’ course in South Africa
The last FLUKA beginners’ course, hosted by the Stellenbosh University in South Africa, attracted 30 students, mainly from South Africa and Europe, but also Zimbabwe, Brazil, China, Qatar. OMA Fellow Giulia Aricò was one of the co-organizers and one of the speakers of the course.
This experience was demanding but also ambitious for Giulia. She needed to refine her planning skills: students registration, scheduling of the course program, search of the event’s venue and organization of the students’ accommodation are just some of the tasks in which Giulia was involved. Moreover, planning time and respecting deadlines, managing costs and expenses according to the available budget are some of the responsibilities that Giulia had to deal with during the organization process. Preparation of the lectures and exercises for the course was another challenge Giulia encountered. Moreover, she needed to deepen her learning and to gain some expertise on fields beyond her research area, like high energy physics, induced radioactivity and neutrino physics. A visit to the iThemba Labs was also organized for all participants as part of the course. The control, experimental and clinical areas were visited under the guide of local scientists, who showed themselves to be very hospitable and willing to answer to the many arising questions.
This course was an amazing experience for Giulia, and gave her the possibility of training her abilities and performance under pressure. It was also a valuable opportunity for enhancing her general knowledge on physics, and for expanding her professional network. Giulia was impressed by the strong desire to learn and high motivation of most of the students in the course. After so much hard work, the positive feedback and attitude of the participants was thrilling and gratifying.