‘People are so much more complicated than physics,’ says Venus Keus.

A few weeks ago, I sat down to speak with Venus Keus, a scientific associate at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and found out I may have had the building blocks of a physicist in me all along.

“As a kid, I was just really, really curious and a bit ‘big-headed’ – maybe stubborn,” Keus tells me. They always wanted to get to the bottom of everything. “You know, those three-year-old – five-year-old kids who always ask ‘why?’ I think I must have been an irritating version of those.”

Keus loves what they do. “I have the best job in the world. I just think about stuff,” they tell me, laughing. They also love to talk about what they do, a rare trait in people who spend much of their time alone, wondering about things that may have never been pondered before.

Their job requires them to figure out answers to the most fundamental questions of our lives. “What happened after the Big Bang? Why is the universe mostly filled with matter and not antimatter? What is dark matter? How is the universe evolving?” they continue on.

If you can prove your theory, you get a Nobel prize, Keus jokes. In reality though, thinking seems to be their favourite part.

“To be representing Ireland on the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG)…is an honour,” the Iranian-born scientist says. The IPPOG is a network of scientists, science educators and communication specialists working in the informal science education space and public engagement for particle physics.

It is the main outreach form for CERN and the European consortium for astroparticle physics, Keus explains.

“I’ve also been kind of advocating establishing an Irish Centre for Particle Physics as a national node that would distribute whatever CERN has to offer to…everybody, not just big universities and institutes in Dublin.”

“Why?” has always been Keus’ go-to question. “You tell me this is how the human body works? But why? What if I break it down into a single cell molecule? How does that work?” they say.

“If you break it down, you get the fundamental elements. And then you broke those down, at the end of the day, it’s just fundamental particles.

“I wanted to get to the bottom of things. And that’s what brought me to physics,” they tell me, arms rested on an office chair and face resting on one hand – I cannot help but draw parallels to Auguste Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’.

Keus has had an unorthodox journey towards their true calling, they tell me. It is something they believe has had an undeniably positive impact in how they perceive the world and the universe beyond.

All that childish curiosity led them to undertake a bachelor’s degree in plasma physics at home, in Iran.

“Iran is not a country that really invested in fundamental physics back then, 20-something years ago. It is a lot worse now.”

After their bachelor’s, Keus made their way to the Netherlands on a scholarship for a master’s in bio nanotechnology.

“Then I realised I don’t really care about the applications of science,” Keus tells me. “So I went to Sweden – to Charles University – to get another master’s in nanoscience.”

“And nanoscience is like really, really small stuff. But I realised – you know – it’s not small enough for me. So I decided to do particles. I went to Belgium.”

A six-year grant project in Belgium later, Keus once again packed up and travelled to the UK to study collider phenomenology – which, in a nutshell, is the understanding of how we collide particles together and what that might teach us about the early universe.

“The very much theoretical stuff that I had learned in Belgium, I managed to connect to – you know – everyday life, to nature, which was fascinating.”

Keus’ stint in Helsinki, Finland for their very first post-doctoral programme introduced them to others who studied early universe cosmology.

“So I had done all of this zigzag of – you know – intermediate physics, small physics, technology for a bit, then mathematical physics, collider phenomenology…and its oh so addicting,” they say. “The more you learn about it, the more exciting it gets.”

After a 12-year stay in Helsinki, Keus turned their sights to Ireland, where they were offered a large grant to work with Science Foundation Ireland – now known as Research Ireland. The funds helped them build their research group and establish particle cosmology in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).

Keus joined DIAS in 2022, a year before Ireland officially applied for CERN membership in 2023.

“I mean, it makes no sense to not be a member of CERN. The benefits that it has are just gigantic for us to ignore,” they tell me. Keus, like many, were surprised at Ireland’s late entry into CERN.

In 2024, the country was finally on track to become an associate member, and in celebration, Keus organised ‘Catch 2022 + 2’, a pun-first conference that discussed topics including dark matter, flavour physics, gravitational waves and the like. The idea was first conceived in 2022.

“I wanted people to also think of the Catch 22 book, which basically tells you, you know, whether you like it or not, something’s going to happen. And to me, that was joining CERN.”

Still, it took one more year before Ireland was officially a CERN associate member, finally opening the country up to new scientific programmes, jobs, as well as opportunities for businesses to procure innovative contracts with the organisation.

“I was adamant that I’m going to have 50-50 gender equality [for Catch 22+2],” Keus says.

“At the last minute, a few of my female speakers had to drop out because of, you know, commitments, because we’re all overstretched…but at the end, we ended up with a 46pc [gender division] – which was revolutionary in particle physics.”

Being from a country in the Middle East, having financial issues and not being a white, cisgender male made life hard for Keus as they navigated their way as an academic. “It took me a while…but I’m very glad that I did it,” they say.

“But people are so much more complicated than physics. As I started getting a bit more senior and having to compete for positions that were more and more rare – I definitely felt…the push against me and I sadly had to face quite some bit of sexism, bullying, harassment, discrimination.”

Unfortunately, sexism in science is not a thing of the past. In 2019, CERN had to cut ties with a professor who made openly sexist remarks by stating women were less capable at physics work than men.

Meanwhile, the Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías found that the representation of women and people from the LGTBQIA+ community is still below 30pc across research areas in particle physics, astroparticle physics and nuclear physics.

“To me, being a good physicist also means building a good community. And to build a good community, you need to train other people,” says Keus.

“The next generation is going to be smarter than this generation…we need to make sure that this is a place where everybody feels welcome.

“I’ve realised through experience, when you hire somebody, say a transgender person from Africa – because they have had to deal with many different issues in their life, they have many different problem-solving skills that a white cisgender man might not have.

“It’s physics. We need these different ways of looking at a problem to be able to solve it. And there is no physics in solitude. There’s no such thing as a solitary genius.”

“I find something interesting and I go where my curiosity takes me,” Keus tells me when I ask them to describe a day in their life as a particle cosmologist.

“But a lot of the time it is me sitting with a pen and paper and just drawing wiggly lines around and thinking; ‘Oh, what if I tried this? Oh, let me see if there’s any connection with this other thing’.

“And yeah, obviously you need a computer – but especially as a theoretical physicist, a lot of my ideas are basically in my head,” said Keus.

“At the end of the day, we know physics. We are physics. We’re all physicists. We know how to run, how to go downhill…how to swim. These are all physics. You use physics to do all of these things.

“I like to understand the difficult quantum field theory or Big Bang theory, the way I understand the rest of the world.”

Keus took some time to think – funnily enough – when I asked them to tell me something they found interesting recently.

“The thing that I found that was the most exciting was something that I came up with,” they tell me, after a few minutes of pondering. “You see, we’ve looked out into the universe and we’ve noticed there’s matter, but we don’t see any antimatter.

“And the problem with matter and antimatter is that if they come together, they will annihilate into photons – particles of light. But one thing I found out is that those very initial particles, or one species of particle, it could have produced that matter-antimatter asymmetry through its interactions with gravity.

“I mean, this is an idea. Nobody’s proved it yet,” they shrug. “But I propose that maybe through the interactions, the way us as matter particles interact with the fabric of space-time – we’ve produced matter and antimatter asymmetry.”

You need more than just yourself to do physics, Keus tells me. “You have to justify why the research you want to do is important.

“It takes you a little bit out of [binge learning] and puts you in touch with the real world.

“At the end of the day, it’s the taxpayers’ money that is paying our salaries. We have to make sure that the public understands what it is we do and why it is important.”

The importance of theoretical science isn’t all that apparent at a quick glance. As an example, Keus points to the fact that we wouldn’t have smartphones if it weren’t for quantum mechanics, and that the origins of the internet can be traced back to CERN.

“The World Wide Web was invented at CERN because they had large files that they needed to share with each other and the internet was born,” says Keus. “Who could live without the internet?

“It is partly on scientists – or let me be specific about myself, about us physicists – that we don’t do enough of outreach, public engagement. Talking to everybody, making sure people understand why it is important, exciting people about…the joy of learning something new is important.

“Especially with the current climate of the world, when everybody’s hating everybody else, I think Ireland joining CERN is such a positive message, because at CERN, nobody cares where you’re from or what you look like.

“We’ve all come here just to basically satisfy our intrinsic curiosity…we want to discover things. And it’s fantastic.”

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