Large Hadron Collider Role for Hope Graduate

When Manex Ormazabal arrived at Hope from his home in the Basque Country, northern Spain, he was determined to seize the opportunity with both hands. 

And his determination paid off. 

Not only did the student get to present his work at an international conference, he’s also now landed a prestigious job working on a landmark project for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). 

Manex completed his Higher National Diplomas (HNDs) at college in his native Spain before arriving in Merseyside to complete his final year. 

The 26-year-old explains: “I arrived at the university with a clear idea to make the most of the course and the university experience. I did not want to waste this time.”

He certainly did not. 

Despite the difficulties caused by Covid-19 restrictions, Manex worked with PhD student Alexander Abad and Dr Anuradha Ranasinghe, Senior Lecturer in Robotics at Hope, on a groundbreaking project to create a sensor which can - among other things - mimic the automatic human reaction to heat. 

You can read all about that published research here. 

Manex, who hails from the Spanish province of Navarre, reveals: “My dissertation, titled ‘Temperature Sensing based on Colour Hue Detection in GelSight-like Sensor - Integrated with Force and Vibration Sensing’, was focused on a part of their project.

“The project Alex and Dr Ranasinghe were working on was ‘Vision-based tactile sensing’, and it is focused on the study of sensation and perception in robotics, haptics or computer vision applications, through vision and touch-based sensors. 

“They created a gel-based visuotactile sensor which, by using a gel material, can sense the force, vibration and temperature of a touched object. 

“One of the purposes of my dissertation was to create an embedded computer vision programme so that this sensor was capable of detecting those three senses with just one programme. 

“And my work was mainly focused on the study of the temperature-sensing part, particularly the calibration of the colour hue detection for the sensor.”

Such was Manex’s enthusiasm for the task, he was ultimately invited to present a paper on the project at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Sensors Conference in 2021. 

It was something of a bittersweet experience - had it not been for a global pandemic, Manex would have flown to Australia to showcase his work. In the end, he had to settle for a virtual conference instead. 

And he adds: “Even though the conference was supposed to be in Sydney, due to the Covid restrictions the conference was held virtually. This was quite a shame since if everything was normal, I would go to Australia to present at the conference properly and the experience would have been completely different. 

“However, presenting it at the virtual conference was also a valuable experience.”

Having boosted his CV at Hope, Manex has ultimately now found himself working as a research technician assisting the ‘ATLAS’ project at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. 

ATLAS is the largest particle detector experiment taking place at the LHC. 

And Manex says: “The project we are involved in is for the construction of the ATLAS detector, which is one of the four sensors that are located along the CERN´s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. 

“We are a group of various physics researchers, engineers and technicians, and as a research technician, my job is to assist researchers in the assembly - running tests, collecting data or examining quality controls.

“Although the job is not related to robotics, which is the field in which I am specialised, for me the job is still very exciting since we are talking about a very important project for CERN, which has the biggest particle accelerator machine in the world.”

Meanwhile Manex describes his time at Hope as ‘special’. 

He sums up: “Although it was just one year of study, I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to study at Liverpool Hope University, because - apart from giving me the chance to study the subject that I like - I had the chance to discover real academic research and to publish three conference papers, which has opened many doors for my future career.”