The work I'm doing will relate to the Top Quark, which is an important particle none the less and which hasn't been studied all that much. It's mass, which I hope to be measuring (more accurately than is currently known) plays an important role in determining the mass of the Higgs (if it exists) and so hopefully my work will be of help in discovering the Higgs by narrowing down the search range.
The LHC is set to start running around November of this year, if things go according to plan, but it won't start at the full 14TeV energy, the first few runs will be at around 450GeV, per beam for 3-6 months as the detectors are calibrated and we get to know how they actually operate, instead of just in theory.
As for why people are scared of the LHC, I'm not too sure, the media love to point out that there is the chance we will create black holes during its operation and well, we probably will once in a blue moon, but they will disappear way before they can even do any slight form of damage, I'm talking pico/nano seconds that they survive here, but I'm not expert on this side of things.
Also Dan Brown and his bloody book Angels and Demons, although making cern known to the wider populous has also made them scared of it by pointing out that anti-matter is created there during the operation of the beam. When anti-matter and matter say hello to one another you get big boom....well, don't worry, we currently don't have any means of storing it (other than in an accelerator beam) and any that we do create won't leave the detectors, well, anti-neutrinos will but they don't do anything so you don't need to worry about them.
Anyone will be welcome to visit, but please bare in mind, I'm not even there yet
and won't be for about another 6 months.