You may find yourself with a huge particle collider and 17 elementary particles and you may ask yourself... well, how did I get here?

I will discuss the successful use of particle accelerators over the past 80 years leading to triumphs of discovery in particle physics, starting with the cyclotron used to measure isotope lifetimes for Maria Goeppert-Mayer's nuclear shell model, which made her the second woman to win the Nobel prize in physics, and the limitations we currently face in scaling down the size of multi-TeV accelerators.  I will point out the interesting innovations which made these discoveries possible and the exciting and uncertain future of high energy accelerators.

Watch a video of the talk here.