By Grace Sferrazza (CAS’26, COM’26)
Fourteen members of Boston University’s High Energy Experimental Physics group—along with along with 13,000 other researchers from over 70 countries—have received the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their work in particle physics at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.
“This recognition is not just about a singular discovery—it’s a celebration of the collaborative spirit and the lasting impact of institutions like BU in one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings of our time,” said Zeynep Demiragli, associate professor of physics. “The Breakthrough Prize was awarded to the CERN experiments, and BU is proud to have played a key role through its long-standing involvement in both the CMS and ATLAS collaborations.”
CERN, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is a research laboratory that uses large, complex scientific instruments, particularly particle accelerators and detectors, including the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to study the fundamental constituents of matter and the forces that govern their interactions.
BU researchers were part of two of the four experiments conducted at CERN that received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, also known as the “Oscars of Science,” which recognizes individuals in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics who have made profound contributions to human knowledge. The two experiments were “A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) Collaboration” and the “Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Collaboration.”
Along with Demiragli, Professors of Physics Lawrence Sulak and James Rohlf, Associate Professor of Physics Indara Suarez, Assistant Professors of Physics Frank Golf and David Sperka, and Adjunct Professors of Physics Tiziano Camporesi and Chiara Mariotti were involved in the CMS Collaboration. BU was also well represented in the ATLAS Collaboration with Professor of Physics John Butler, Professor Emeritus of Physics Steve Ahlen, and research scientists James Shank, Saul Yousset, and Yan Zhen.
“I came to BU to build these future experiments,” said Suarez. “It’s really a team effort that has allowed BU to be a very noticeable presence on the CMS experiment.”
The CMS and ATLAS experiments investigate properties of the Higgs boson—a fundamental particle first predicted in 1964 and proven to exist with the first run of experimental data from the CMS experiment in 2012—and pose new scientific questions about the Standard Model—the prevailing theory of particle physics that describes all known particles and forces in the universe—and the relationship between the Higgs boson and dark matter.
The prize money, including a million dollars each awarded to CMS and ATLAS, will support the experiments and future research with a third run of data to occur at the end of the decade. With these funds, collaborations will be able to offer grants to doctoral students from BU to do research at CERN and work with the LHC.
“The next thing we’re doing is building the next generation of experiments that will really be able to answer or shine a light on some of these open questions,” Golf said.