Scientists from UMass Amherst are among the researchers worldwide honored with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded to the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC)  alongside its sister experiments ALICE, CMS and LHCb. Among the laureates are 36 scientists from the UMass Amherst research team, including 14 doctoral students, who produced results based on the data collected at the LHC from 2015 to 2018. The UMass Amherst team is led by physicists Stéphane Willocq, also the ATLAS spokesperson, as well as Benjamin Brau, Rafael Coelho Lopes de Sa, Carlo Dallapiccola and Verena Martinez Outschoorn. 

ATLAS is one of the largest and most complex scientific instruments ever built and one of the largest collaborative efforts ever attempted in science, with approximately 6,000 members and 3,000 scientific authors as well as research teams located at CERN and at member universities and laboratories worldwide. As a general-purpose particle detector measuring over 40 meters long and around 25 meters in diameter, it was designed to investigate the fundamental building blocks of matter and the forces governing our universe. Its cutting-edge systems track particles produced in particle collisions at unprecedented energies, enabling discoveries like the Higgs boson and searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model.
 

The Breakthrough Prize, awarded to more than 13,000 Scientists from ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb experiments, specifically highlights the ATLAS Collaboration’s significant contributions to particle physics, including studies of rare processes and matter-antimatter asymmetry, detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties and the exploration of some of the deepest questions about our universe.

“The Breakthrough Prize is a testament to the dedication and ingenuity of the ATLAS Collaboration and our colleagues across the LHC experiments,” said Willocq. “This prize recognizes the collective vision and monumental effort of thousands of ATLAS collaborators worldwide.” 

“I am extremely proud to see the extraordinary accomplishments of the LHC collaborations honoured with this prestigious prize,” said Fabiola Gianotti, director-general of CERN. “It is a beautiful recognition of the collective efforts, dedication, competence and hard work of thousands of people from all over the world who contribute daily to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.”

UMass Amherst has been at the forefront of ATLAS research since 2004, contributing to:

• Commissioning and operation of the muon spectrometer detector and electronics critical for the identification and measurement of muons,
• Development of the software to reconstruct the trajectory of muons enabling the Higgs boson discovery as well as hundreds of precise tests of the Standard Model and searches for new physics, and
• Leadership in software, computing, physics and the ATLAS collaboration shaping the experiment’s scientific direction, including the operation of the Northeast Tier 2 computing center at the MGHPCC in Holyoke.

“Our team’s work contributes to every aspect of the experiment: design and construction of new detectors, operations and calibration of systems installed at the LHC and development of software for data processing and analysis. The new detectors designed and built at UMass Amherst use state-of-the-art electronic systems and advanced materials. The software written by our scientists leverages and develops novel AI/ML methods in each step of the data analysis chain,” says Lopes de Sa. 

“Our Ph.D. students and post-doctoral researchers are leading several recent studies of Higgs boson properties and matter-antimatter asymmetry, as well as searches for new physics in the form of exotic long-lived particles,” says Martinez Outschoorn. “This recognition affirms the impact of our contributions and inspires us to continue exploring the universe’s most fundamental questions.”

While the ATLAS Collaboration celebrates the recognition of the Breakthrough Prize, its focus remains firmly on the future. The third operation period of the LHC is currently underway and preparations for the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade are advancing rapidly. The UMass team of physicists and engineers is deeply involved in preparing ATLAS for its next chapter. They are leading the development of the muon trigger processor and the inner tracker mechanical structures as well as software and computing for the High-Luminosity LHC, which will increase collision rates tenfold when it begins operation in 2030. 

“We are now preparing the ATLAS detectors of the future — designed to harness these unprecedented data and further push our understanding of the universe’s fundamental building blocks,” concludes Willocq.