Professor of physics Stéphane Willocq has officially assumed the role of spokesperson for the ATLAS experiment, a collaboration of approximately 6,000 scientists worldwide who are using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland, to probe the origins of the universe and to reveal its most fundamental constituents and their interactions. 

Willocq was elected last summer to the position, which serves as the de facto primary investigator leading the ATLAS effort, and his two-year term began March 1.
 

The team is searching for many different kinds of new phenomena, particularly for what Willocq calls the “dark sector,” or the mysterious world of dark matter, which has never been directly observed. This is the first time in ATLAS’s 30-year existence that a scientist from an institution in the U.S. has been chosen as leader of the experiment.

A member of the ATLAS team since 2004, Willocq will steer the project through the final phase of LHC Run 3 and navigate the transition into the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) era.

“With just over a year left in Run 3, it is essential that we maximize this final stretch of data-taking to secure the best and largest possible dataset,” Willocq says in a story posted on the ATLAS Project website about his new leadership position. “By the winter of 2027, we aim to have the first results using the full Run 3 dataset — marking the true beginning of ATLAS’ broad Run 3 physics programme and providing an opportunity to explore uncharted waters in fundamental physics.”

The complete story on Willocq’s new leadership role with the ATLAS Project can be found on the project’s website, www.atlas.cern.