Question: Do you ever get tired of researching the same thing?

Ceri Brenner answered on 21 Jun 2011:

No, i don’t think that I’ll get tired of researching laser plasma physics, possibly a bit frustrated sometimes when progress is slow, but not bored. Firstly, there’s lots of different aspects to study, i’m never working on just one problem at a time (normally juggling 2 or 3), like ‘can we design a special target that will produce a high energy proton beam’, ‘can we design the laser pulse so that it accelerates the highest number of protons possible’ or ‘can we design a diagnostic that will be more effective in an experiment’. And secondly, you’re always working in a research group which means that if you ever feel that you’ve reached a dead end, then someone will help you come up with a different way to approach the problem and get to the solution, so your research method is constantly evolving and never gets monotonous.