Alberto Belvedere - Travel Award Interview

PORTRAIT | Doctoral Researcher / Funding / PHGS / Travel Grant

Alberto Belvedere is a doctoral researcher at DESY in the FS-NL group. In 2025, he won one of four this year's PHGS Travel Awards and received 3000 € to finance participation in scientific events. In an interview, he decribes the conference he attended, and what kind of tips he has for future applicants to the travel award scheme of the PIER Helmholtz Graduate School.

Alberto Belvedere

Congratulations on winning the PHGS Travel Award 2025. You are one of a total of four PHGS members who have won the 2025 award and thus received up to 3,000 euros to finance participation in a scientific event. For which event did you use the PHGS Travel Award money for?

The money was used to participate in the LHCP 2025: 13th Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference

Where, when and for how long did the event take place?

The event took place in Taipei, Taiwan, from 05 to 10 May 2025.

Please describe the event. Who was the organizer? Were there many people present or only a few? Is it a regular event or a one-time event? What was the event about? Which speakers or interesting people were there?

LHCP is an annual major conference regarding the LHC collider experiments. This year, it was organised in Taipei by the National Taiwan University and involved hundreds of people who came together to present the latest results obtained by the LHC experiments.

Please describe your role at the event. Were you mainly a listener? A visitor? Did you give a talk or display a poster? Were you there to meet people for discussions?

I went there to present the latest result on associated t(t) production by the CMS experiment. In particular, I presented the analysis that lead to the observation of the tWZ process, which was the main project of my PhD.

Please describe how you benefited from the event. Did you get the chance to broaden and strengthen your network? Did you gain new scientific knowledge and/or received feedback on your scientific findings? Were you able to clarify questions that will help you in your further work on your doctorate?

The conference was really stimulating and I could at the same time gain insights on different physics fields and meet people that I only knew from online conversations.

What was the best thing about the event?

The organisation was perfect. All the different sessions were always very interesting with very nice coffee breaks and stimulating discussions. Also the conference dinner was beautiful, it was host in the Grand Hotel of Taipei which is one of the most impressive building I have ever seen.