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Hi! Today is my last day curating this account, and I want to talk about my experience building and growing international scientific networks, particularly in Latin America
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As I mentioned on my first thread, I’m originally from Venezuela and in 2010 moved to France to do a PhD in experimental particle physics. But I didn’t mention that at that moment I wasn’t the only Venezuelan following that path 
and in 2010 moved to France to do a PhD in experimental particle physics. But I didn’t mention that at that moment I wasn’t the only Venezuelan following that path
In the early 2000s European-funded projects aiming to link Latin-American institutions with the research program at CERN provided financial support to hundreds of scientists and students from Latin America for scientific visits at CERN and other European research institutions.
In the case of Venezuela, more than twenty students received support to do research internships in French
institutions and in just a few years, many of us completed a PhD in experimental particle physics in European universities associated to the LHC experiments from CERN
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institutions and in just a few years, many of us completed a PhD in experimental particle physics in European universities associated to the LHC experiments from CERN.
This takes me to 2014, at this point we were around a dozen Venezuelan PhDs working in various institutions of Europe and North America, linked to CERN experiments or the technology industry. In Venezuela, the field of experimental particle physics was practically non-existent.
It wasn't easy for us just to go back home and work in local universities, as many of us originally planned. The deteriorating situation in Venezuela made this almost impossible to consider. https://apnews.com/article/9856c6f8bec6415ca033e08a88bb556e
Furthermore, the crisis created an extensive brain drain in the universities. Heroic efforts are made by colleagues still working in Venezuela, doing their best to provide stable and robust teaching to students eager to follow a scientific career/path. However, they need help.
All of these reasons motivated us to establish a new project called @cevale2ve. This was a virtual research and learning community created with the initial goal of promoting and spreading interest in high energy physics in Venezuela http://www.cevale2ve.org/en/home/
@cevale2ve aimed to stimulate venezuelan physics’ students to consider a career in scientific research while informing them about study opportunities and possible career paths in research. Our tools were mainly online courses, webinars as well established e-learning programs.
Through the years, the activities organised by us in @cevale2ve were officially included in the postgraduate course portfolios of the several public Venezuelan universities. Furthermore, the reach of this project was extended to universities in Colombia and Peru.
The efforts started within @cevale2ve had fruitful outcomes, a high energy physics course ran for 4 editions with more than 70 students joining from institutions in Venezuela, Colombia and Peru. A dozen of these students continued on to a masters and PhDs in field.
I must mention that all of the activities of this project relied on the effort and enthusiasm of volunteers, we prepared and ran this courses in our evenings after finishing our day jobs. It is not a surprise this could not be sustainable in the long term
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This pushed the members of @cevale2ve(lead mainly by my dear colleague and friend @rcamachotoro) to start looking for financial support. Some initial help came from the ATLAS experiment and the International Centre for Theoretical Physics but a bigger project was in the making...
In 2020, the project @lacongaphysics was born! It was like @cevale2ve but bigger (more countries involved), better (a larger network of researchers with all kinds of experience) and with 
(an ERASMUS+ project financed by the EU)!
(an ERASMUS+ project financed by the EU)!
More seriously, @lacongaphysics is a European-Latinamerican network of 11 universities, 9 research institutions and 3 industrial partners with the goal of building a virtual learning platform in Advanced Physics in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. https://laconga.redclara.net/
This program focuses in high energy physics and complex systems and is included as a specialisation in the Physics masters of the university partners. It is based on three pillars: courses in physics theory/phenomenology, data science and instrumentation.
After spending all 2020 organising and developing the program, this week the first students of @lacongaphysics started their classes
. https://twitter.com/lacongaphysics/status/1351204296780636163?s=20
. https://twitter.com/lacongaphysics/status/1351204296780636163?s=20
The reason I'm telling the story of these projects is because I know that many researchers from developing countries want to give back to their home countries and institutions.
In order to help as much as we can, we need to discuss our initiatives, share the tools we develop, and learn together from our collective experiences 
I think this is my last tweet of today and this week. Thank you all for reading and interacting with my tweets, I hope you found them interesting 
. You can find me at my personal account: @CamilaRangelS . Good bye
!!
. You can find me at my personal account: @CamilaRangelS . Good bye!!
