Meet the Northeastern co-op helping to upgrade the world’s largest particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research - Northeastern University College of Science

For Christian Bernier, it started with videos he saw as a kid on popular YouTube channels like Minute Physics.

Bernier has always been interested in science, so he found topics around the fundamentals and building blocks of the world to be particularly fascinating. He quickly developed an “insatiable desire to know more about the universe, physics and how the world works,” he says.

Time after time, the work being done by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, was brought up in those videos. As a kid, Bernier had no idea what CERN was about, but he was intrigued.

“They’d mention CERN offhandedly, and I was like, ‘What is this thing they keep mentioning?’”

So, Bernier did some digging and fell in love with the research center’s mission and work — so much so that when it was time to decide on an area of study at Northeastern, Bernier decided to pursue a combined major in computer science and physics.