Can you introduce yourself, your role in the university and tell us a bit about your background?
My name is Carsten Welsch, and I am the Head of Accelerator Science at the University of Liverpool, based at the Cockcroft Institute at Daresbury Lab. I am a physicist by training and have studied physics at the University of Frankfurt in Germany and at UC Berkeley in California. I completed my PhD in accelerator science at the University of Frankfurt. Following my doctorate, I worked as postdoc in Germany, Denmark and Japan, and spent a few years in Switzerland as a CERN Fellow, before joining Liverpool back in 2008.
Why did you choose to work in the University of Liverpool?
At the time, working and living in the UK wasn't really on my radar. However, as I was searching for a permanent position, the opportunity at the newly founded Cockcroft Institute caught my attention. They had a recruitment drive in 2007-2008 and that was very attractive to me because it was the place to be – an international centre of excellence in accelerator science. Accelerator science is not an established area at most universities and in most countries. To get the most out of my research I needed an environment that would support my ideas, and the Cockcroft Institute provided exactly that., It was the ideal place to bring my ideas to life, and that’s what ultimately drew me to Liverpool at the time.
What research are you currently undertaking?
My research is in accelerator science, with a focus on beam instrumentation. My QUASAR Group develops new types of monitors and sensors to characterise beams of charged particles. This includes any kind of beam from very low to very high energies, from electrons all the way to heavy ions, and from colliders to next-generation light sources. We push the boundaries in a number of different areas: Antimatter research, data science, medical applications and quantum technologies – to only name a few.
What is your favourite part of this research?
I think what I really like in academic research is the diversity of the role: we can do research that has immediate, practical applications, so something where we can see that there is a problem and try to help solve that problem and propose a solution, whilst in parallel exploring ideas way beyond what is currently possible. Many of our projects have a timescale of 10 to 20 years into the future. Some of projects I’m working on at the moment are looking at construction towards the end of this century. I find this forward-looking aspect of research particularly fascinating - the need to have a vision of where you want to go with your experiments and new technologies and what kind of barriers you want to break next. In addition, pretty much all of our research is realized with international partners, so we get to work with the leading experts and best research organisations in the world, which I find absolutely fantastic.
Why did you choose to pursue a career in the Department of Physics?
I never really had working at a university as an aim, in fact when I studied, I was 100% sure that I wanted to go into the industry sector. I studied physics and economics for that reason. I never saw myself in academia for many different reasons. But as often happens, life had other plans. Different opportunities arise, things you like suddenly change, life plans shift, and you consider questions related to job security. I also started to think not just about myself and my aims, but also what is best for my family. In the end this journey has led me to what I do today, and I’m very happy with where I have ended up, but I never had an academic career as a target when I studied physics in the first place.
How have your past experiences shaped your approach to teaching and research?
Massively, especially having worked and lived in different countries. These very different environments had significant impact on how I work today. There are many fundamental differences in how we communicate and work together around the world. Simple things, from how we organise meetings all the way to how we communicate efficiently across different discipline boundaries. You need to have been embedded into different environments, see what the differences are between working in the US, in Europe, in the UK, in Germany and in Japan, and then take all these impressions in, question and continuously improve your own approach. Trying to make your research, your work, and how you work with others better by combining the aspects that you have experienced yourself. This has impacted on everything I do today, the way I do research, my teaching but also the way that I work with partners all around the world. For example, when it comes to how we organise events, it’s really about bringing on board these different experiences to give the best possible experience to all participants.
Did you face any challenges along the way and how did you overcome them?
It can happen that you are working with somebody, and you are both saying the same words, but then you realise that both of you have a very different understanding of these words. It is important to realize that neither of the discussion partners necessarily have to be in the wrong. We have a classic example right now: You and I are sitting at this virtual table. If I would draw a ‘9’ on the table, it would always be a 9 for me, but from your perspective it is a ‘6’. Neither of us is wrong, we both just have a different perspective. When it comes to other challenges related to working together, it is easy to say that you want to be inclusive and that everyone should have the same potential to work and learn, but to do this in practice requires very significant effort and breaking down many barriers. I was the Head of Liverpool’s Department of Physics for almost 10 years, and what the department is now was very much influenced by this vision. When I started there were no meeting rooms with hearing loops, no accessible or gender-neutral bathrooms, there were no meeting spaces or a kitchen area where you could raise or lower worktops in case somebody had specific medical requirements or required a wheelchair. You can then easily say ‘I want to make our department accessible to everybody!’, but in practice this requires a lot of thinking, planning and quite significant investment where there is usually no budget at all readily available. Seeing what is not good enough, having a clear vision of how you can fix it, but then not to leave it with that idea and to make the actual changes – this is what drives improvement and what is very hard to do. When I look back, I am very happy about the many barriers that I have successfully removed over the years.
How would you describe the environment at the University of Liverpool?
I think the environment we have now in the department of physics is good. It is inclusive and supports staff and students where it is needed, to the extent a department can manage it. There is a strong sense of belonging together and of being able to tackle research problems collectively. Like other departments, we need to be mindful of how we work together and how we support our students. To me, a university thrives with the people on campus: the staff, the students, and everyone working and talking together.
What advice would you give someone considering a career in physics?
I think the beauty about studying physics is that it opens many doors. It doesn’t define what you have to do after your studies, it doesn’t tell you that you have to become a university lecturer or professor, it gives you sets of skills that will be extremely valuable for your entire life. When I am looking at the ‘Top 10 Employability Skills’, then all of these skills make up the physics degree program: From team-working to critical thinking to digital literacy.
When it comes to career development and planning, my advice would be to keep an open mind at any stage where a decision has to be made: Should I do a master’s degree, a PhD, go into industry, go into the medical field, go into quantum sensors? What I have always done and what has worked very well for me is that I explored different avenues in parallel, whether it was for continuing education or the next job: I would consider different options and go for the one that I thought would really work best for me and my family at the time. Usually, there is never just the one perfect solution, but several alternatives where smaller or larger compromises have to be made. It is important to be prepared to revise that decision in case things turn out differently than expected. One example from my personal life was certainly the move to Geneva to start my CERN Fellowship. Leaving Germany at a time when our first child was soon to be born, living in a French-speaking environment and far away from the rest of our families - there were so many things that could have potentially not worked well. My family and I took the approach to give it our best try because it was a fantastic opportunity. But we said from the beginning that if it doesn’t work, we do something different. We always had that open mind, and it has helped us navigate challenging decisions well.
What are you hoping to achieve in the future?
On the one hand, I have big plans in my research with breakthrough-studies in low energy antimatter physics, pushing the boundaries in data science, bringing new medical technologies to international markets that have huge potential to revolutionize healthcare, and helping develop some of the most advanced research infrastructures in the world.
In addition, one of my passions has been to make physics education better at all levels. In particular at postgraduate level I have been driving inclusive training schemes for many years. I firmly believe that structured collaborative training schemes are ideal to get the most out of science and innovation. This requires permanent improvements and adaptation of the underpinning research and skills trainings to meet ever-changing needs. That is something I want to continue to lead.
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
People sometimes think there’s one template-based physicist and that they should fit a certain brief to be able to study physics. I think physics is fundamentally extremely diverse and there are many different things one can do within a physics context; in my research group we currently have people from 18 different nationalities with very different backgrounds. I think that diversity allows us to get the best out of our research, by combining different skills, expertise and viewpoints. Whether someone is interested in the fundamental laws of nature, mathematically very gifted, interested in simulations or in coding, or someone who really likes more the practical side of physics: putting things together and making a demanding experiment work. Breaking down boundaries using any and all of these approaches is what advances physics at the end of the day. People should not try to fit into some template, look like Einstein or replicate what already exists. If they have a passion for physics and are not afraid of questioning the status quo, I’m sure they will do very well in our subject.
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