Budding Kheri scientist offered job at top European lab CERN

LAKHIMPURKHERI: A budding scientist from Lakhimpur Kheri district in Uttar Pradesh has been offered a job with the prestigious Geneva-based CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) which will give him an annual pay package of Rs 98 lakh.

CERN is the largest particle physics lab in the world and its name is derived from the acronym for the French Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire. It was at CERN that the existence of the Higgs boson or God particle was confirmed a few years ago.

“’Yes, I have done it,” says Muneer Khan, 22, who belongs to a poor family of Gauriya village in Behjam block of Lakhimpur Kheri district.

“In June, I cleared a written exam and three rounds of interviews. Now, I have been offered a job at 11,670 Swiss francs per month (Rs 820,167 per month),” said Munner, a final year student of B Tech (electronics and communications) at Birla Institute of Applied Sciences, Bhimtal, Uttarakhand. He is scheduled to join CERN in June next year as a system assistant engineer in the laboratory’s department of accelerators and technology.

In his role, he will be expected to implement new systems, correct software errors in the existing systems and improve performance through hardware upgrades, according to the offer letter issued by CERN.

“I faced financial and emotional hardship since childhood. I lost my father in 1997 when I was just a year old,” he said.

“My five elder brothers and three sisters brought me up,” he added.

When he was in class 11 in this college in 2013, he received ‘Young Scientist Award’ from the President of India for his project on generating electricity from garbage. Next year, he ranked second in the country and topped in UP in the National Science Dissertation Competition, he said.

Muneer also said he won a national talent search scholarship. His performance also helped him get admission in the Birla Institute of Applied Sciences, which too awarded him a scholarship. Muneer said his research work in France under Prof Fabian Courreges in 2017 proved to be a milestone in his life. Prof Courreges teaches at the University of Limoges in France.