The most recent schedule envisions beam reaching ATLAS in late November with low-energy collisions shortly thereafter.

Unlike most of us at CERN, Hans Peter Beck is a Swiss native. He grew up in places like Weggis, on the shore of Lake Lucerne; Wolfenschiessen, in the mountainous interior of Switzerland; Dietikon, a suburb of Zürich, and finally in Zürich itself. He completed his matura – the Swiss secondary education – at the Mathematical Natural Science Gymnasium, Rämibühl, Zürich. Although he received better marks in chemistry at the time, physics held a much stronger attraction because it delves into matter at its most basic.

Looking back, as he can now, from a position of maturity, Nabil Ghodbane is a little embarrassed about the scene that unfolded when he met Peter Higgs. “At the time, I was maybe a bit naïve,” he admits bashfully, as he recounts a tale of waiting outside the toilets after a Scottish summer school talk to greet Professor Higgs on his way out. “We were like groupies!” he laughs at himself and other students who stampeded the reluctant physics celebrity.

“The first time I came to Munich, I fell in love with the city,” says Sandra Horvat. She was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and her parents and brother still live 20 kilometres from the city, in Samobor. “It's a lovely and cosy place, one of the oldest and favourite recreation places for many Croats. I like it a lot!”

As an ATLAS physicist, it’s not often you get to stand back and look at the bigger picture, according to Richard Teuscher: “Not at all! It’s only really when you get a chance to talk to someone about what you’re doing. Day-to-day, you’re writing software or fixing some part of the detector. But at the end you think, ‘Wow, look what we’ve done!’"

Moscow has been home to Lidia Smirnova for as long as she can remember. She was born in Ukraine, her mother’s region, shortly after the end of World War II. Her father, from Siberia, had served five years in the thick of the fighting, on the Soviet side. “He was wounded twice, but was really lucky to be saved with his life,” says Lidia. He was also very lucky to be stopped in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, on his way from Germany to Japan. In that summer, 1945, he met Lidia’s mother.

Most people at CERN know Claudia Marcelloni as the ATLAS photographer and the exquisite eye behind the ATLAS book, Exploring the Mystery of Matter. But to Claudia, photography is just one tool that she could use to practice her passion: the creative communication of ideas.

Born Jorge in Argentina, George Mikenberg is a man of many aliases. He changed his name to the Hebrew Giora when he settled in Israel, but in English-speaking company, he encountered a problem: “The Anglo-Saxons cannot pronounce it, or rather they pronounce it in a way that means WC in Arabic.” And so he became George, but also Georg for the German-speaking, and Georges for his French-Swiss wife.

For Jochen Schieck, monthly trips to CERN – often spanning just one day – suit him well. The rest of the time he’s based at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Physics in Munich.

Particle physics is an endurance sport. The building of ATLAS took nearly two decades of design and construction. In the early autumn, the blast from the first colliding particles will mark the start of a multi-year race to discover new physics. This rhythm of preparation and performance is one that Adele Rimoldi knows well.

Osamu Jinnouchi had never left his native Japan when he first came to CERN, as a summer student with KEK, aged 25. “I don’t quite remember, but it was all impressive,” he ponders. “Everything was different here.”

A new multimedia contest has been set up to put talented young filmmakers and science communicators in touch with ATLAS.

Mountains are an enduring presence in the life of Marco Aurelio Díaz. “Wherever you are in Chile, the Andes are there, and they make an imprint in your mind that time does not erase,” he explains.

Harry Potter fans can probably sympathise with Helenka Przysiezniak Frey’s initial reaction to being profiled for e-News. “My husband tells me: do it,” she wrote in an email, but her latest reading material had left her with some reservations: “[The Harry Potter] equivalent of ATLAS e-News, the Daily Prophet, says all kinds of lies about Harry and co.”

How does Borut Kersevan spend his free time? “What free time? is the answer,” he says with a wry grin. But what little he has, he likes to spend on family, travel, and good conversation.

On Friday, March 13th, British high school student Jonathan Higgs discovered the elusive Higgs boson among the simulated particle tracks in Minerva – a special form of ATLAS' event display program, Atlantis, designed for students in the International Particle Physics Masterclasses.

Salsa, singing, sight-seeing and skiing are all high on the list of ways to relax and unwind for up-beat PhD student Laura González Silva. “Dancing, I loved it always. I try to go as often as I can,” she smiles. Back in her hometown of Buenos Aires, Laura was part of a choir too, but in Geneva her vocal talents are mainly consigned to karaoke bars or her shower. “Singing and dancing – they’re a part of me,” she grins. “I forget about everything. And it’s good after spending ten-hours-a-day in front of the computer!”

If you want insight into the lives of graduate students, look no further than Jorge Cham’s Piled Higher and Deeper comic series, detailing the trials and tribulations of earning a PhD. He brought his well-honed observational humour to CERN, meeting with a few graduate students and post-docs for a slice of life at the world’s largest physics experiment.

Twenty-eight-year-old Josef Kristofoletti is a traveling artist. On the site documenting the work of his group, transitantenna.com, he writes: "I am taking a survey of American mural painting in all of its forms, looking for the best pictures across the land, and painting some along the way." One of these paintings is an image of the ATLAS detector, a 13 x 7 metre mural on the side of the Redux Contemporary Art Center in South Carolina, entitled "Angel of the Higgs Boson".

In his more laid-back free time, Stanislav Němeček enjoys good detective novels and a production about a fictional Czech genius by the name of Jára Cimrman. The legends of Cimrman began in radio shows but later became plays in two parts: a lecture by a “professor” about recently uncovered work by this scientist/inventor/writer/philosopher and a scene played out by actors. The idea of Cimrman has been around since 1966, beginning as sort of a comic, literary protest to Communist rule. New episodes are performed every few years. Though a fictional genius, Cimrman is a symbol of Czech pride.

It was Santa Claus who first introduced TileCal data quality coordinator Andrea Dotti to “serious science”, when he was just 12 years old. “Since I was a small kid, I was more skilled in maths,” he explains. “I never liked to learn poems by heart, history was not my thing…” But the year Andrea received a chemistry set for Christmas he was immediately hooked, his interest fostered by a kind elderly pharmacist who sold him supplies.

ATLAS got a little taste of Tinseltown on February 12th, as director Ron Howard, and actors Tom Hanks and Ayelet Zurer rolled into town to promote their new film – an adaption of Dan Brown’s bestseller Angels and Demons.

You may already know the head of the Secretariat, Connie Potter, but you may not be familiar with all of the women who help keep the ATLAS collaboration running smoothly. Sitting around a table with Petya Lilova (Bulgarian), Kate Richardson (British), Christine Demirdjian (French), and Claire Gibon (French), the team of the ATLAS Secretariat, the first question was: “What work in ATLAS falls to the Secretariat?”

Even after 40 years living between Britain and Geneva, New York is still audible in the voice of Eric Eisenhandler. He grew up in the Bronx – “the North Bronx” he quickly corrects, lest we imagine the violence and urban decay that South Bronx came to symbolize.

Over Christmas, we followed the progress of ATLAS collaborator, Katharine Leney, as she and her boyfriend Pierre drove across Europe and Africa in a beaten up second hand car, to raise money for development charities working in Africa.