28 year old  Lewis, from Glasgow, is currently in his 4th year of the 5-year Masters in Physics with Advanced Research course at The University of Strathclyde where he is focusing his studies and thesis on computational physics, machine learning and particle accelerator systems.

Lewis started out his education journey, leaving high school mid-way through his 5th year without any higher qualifications so the physics-based HNC at West College Scotland’s Clydebank campus was the perfect stepping stone between leaving school and securing a place at university.

Speaking of his College experience Lewis said,

 “The courses at WCS were a good introduction to some of the topics offered at university and provided the foundation required to excel in my degree. This has opened up a world of opportunities and has allowed me to work on some amazing projects in places like CERN where I completed a summer research project in high performance computing.”

Now preparing to return to CERN to complete his master's year on a 12-month project working on the multi-parameter optimization of LINAC4, which is the Linear Particle Accelerator responsible for injecting proton beams into the Large Hadron Collider, Lewis said,

“I'll essentially be trying to improve the overall quality of the proton bunches using Physics-informed machine learning - a subset of Artificial Intelligence using algorithms with a nice combination of physics, computer science and statistics. Outside of that I plan to do a lot of climbing and snowboarding in the alps!”

Lewis thinks that choosing a career in Science has allowed him to you to do something different from the norm,

“Although I am still an undergraduate, pursuing a career in science has already allowed me to work within some of the biggest international organizations and gave me the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with some of the most brilliant minds from all over the world. It has also opened up the opportunity for travel and enabled my move to Switzerland next year.”

With hopes of progressing to the Doctoral program at CERN, spending another 3 years in Switzerland while completing his PhD, Lewis is aiming for an exciting career in accelerator physics research, where he will be involved in the R&D of future high energy particle accelerators which are used in everything from physics to virology and cancer treatments/research.

Lewis highlighted the fantastic progression route starting out at WCS has offered him saying,

“If you are interested in science and are a returning learner, or maybe didn't achieve as well as you'd hoped in school, the HNC Applied Science will help bridge that gap and will provide you with the tools you need to kickstart a career in science.”

When asked what his advice would be to any future students considering a career in Science he said,

“Find something you really enjoy in science and become dedicated in being the best you can at it. When you enjoy what you're studying everything else is relatively easy. Other than that, just get started!

Check out our range of Science courses on our website to follow in Lewis's footsteps: https://www.westcollegescotland.ac.uk/courses/course-directory/multiple-course-applications/science