Searching for Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions, Kuwaiti Physicist Travels to CERN

Not many people can say they worked with the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator while in grad school, but Kuwaiti physicist Eissa Alnasrallah can. With support from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), Alnasrallah undertook a summer program at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2019, where he worked on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
عن تجربته قال النصرالله: “كنتُ محظوظاً لأن مؤسسة الكويت للتقدم العلمي أتاحت لي هذه الفرصة. لقد ساعدتني تلك التجربة على تشكيل منظوري حول العلوم”.
Alnasrallah earned a bachelor’s in nuclear engineering and physics in 2015 and a master’s in nuclear engineering and engineering physics in 2016 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S. He then returned to Kuwait to work as a fellow at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) and pursue a second graduate degree, a master’s in physics from Kuwait University. One of Alnasrallah’s advisors at Kuwait University encouraged him to apply for the CERN summer program.
While at CERN in Meyrin, Switzerland, Alnasrallah worked on a team analyzing data from the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a general purpose particle physics detector built on the LHC. With data from the CMS, physicists can study the building blocks of matter, including the well-known Higgs boson particle. This work makes visible the tiniest details that shape our universe.
إن فرصاً من هذا النوع، التي تتيح تعزيز فهم البشرية للكون، هي التي ألهمت النصرالله لدراسة الفيزياء في المقام الأول. ويقول عن ذلك: “نحن البشر يُهمنا حقاً أن نفهم الطبيعة. هذا هو السؤال الكبير: لماذا نحن هنا؟ كيف يعمل الكون؟ والفيزياء هي المجال الذي يجيب عن هذه الأسئلة”.
During the summer program, Alnasrallah also studied new programming languages, attended lectures, and participated in extracurricular activities like a cultural day and a hackathon. During the hackathon, his team worked for an entire weekend to design a web game based on a basic understanding of nuclear and particle physics.
إن تنوعَ المجموعة والبيئةَ التعاونية مكَّنا المشاركين من خوض تجربة غنية. قال النصرالله إن لقاء باحثين آخرين من جميع أنحاء العالم ذكَّره بأنه للإجابة عن عدد من أكبر الأسئلة في الحياة، “تحتاج حقاً إلى تعاون الجميع من خلفيات مختلفة”.
Back in Kuwait, Alnasrallah continues to work at KISR and study for his second graduate degree. His research now involves developing metal-based nanomaterials for hydrogen storage and contributing to Kuwait’s Energy Outlook, part of the institute’s goals to transform Kuwait’s oil-dependent economy by shifting to sustainable energy sources.