This spring, MIT physics PhD student Manu Srivastava opened an email from a group of Indian high‑schoolers who wanted to enter the Beamline for Schools competition and were looking for a mentor. Srivastava often declines requests that come through paid platforms, but this direct, sincere message convinced him to help. After months of emails and calls, the team secured a trip to CERN in Geneva, where they spent two weeks turning their idea into a real experiment.
Calling themselves Team attoPION, six students from four Indian schools were selected as one of five teams out of a record 712 entries in the 13th Beamline for Schools. When they first met Srivastava they already had several ideas; his role was to filter out the impractical ones and keep the scientifically interesting proposals. They settled on measuring pion charge exchange: a positively charged pion collides with a neutron in a target, producing a neutral pion and a proton, and the team aims to quantify the reaction rate.
Srivastava suspected that this measurement could be relevant to the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). DUNE co‑spokesperson Dave Newbold explained that pion‑matter interactions affect neutrino flavor and energy reconstruction, so a precise understanding reduces systematic uncertainties. Newbold emphasized that the proposal is “real experimental particle physics,” not a classroom demo, and that a successful result could even be publishable.
At CERN the students worked hands‑on with detectors and data‑acquisition systems, collected and analyzed data, and attended talks by CERN scientists. In preparation they collaborated with Beamline for Schools support scientist Berare Göktürk, who warned them that the charge‑exchange process is extremely rare and that they would need robust trigger and selection strategies. With only 12 days of test‑beam time, Göktürk urged humility and awareness of limitations, but also wanted the students to experience the full journey of a scientist.
For Srivastava, mentoring pushed him far beyond his theoretical‑physics comfort zone. MIT’s culture of interdisciplinary seminars encouraged him to explore questions outside his research area. Growing up in India, he sees this mentorship as a way to inspire young people there to pursue fundamental science. As he put it, “I didn’t even know what CERN was in high school, but these students are truly outstanding and deserve all the credit.”
Blogger's Review: The story highlights how elite research facilities can empower talented students worldwide. In a short span the team achieved a high‑level experimental design and execution, demonstrating the power of cross‑border collaboration and mentorship, while also providing potentially valuable data for flagship projects like DUNE.