Scientists from the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics at UC Santa Cruz are among the thousands of researchers 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. This is one of the major awards sponsored by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
The SCIPP researchers honored in the April 5 announcement are Tony Affolder, Earl Almazan, Marco Battaglia, Vitaliy Fadeyev, Alexander Grillo, Michael Hance, Jacob Johnson, Alan Litke, William Lockman, Simone Mazza, Jason Nielsen, Sam Roberts, Hartmut Sadrozinski, Bruce Schumm, Abraham Seiden, Giordon Stark, Alex Wang, and Marcus Wong.
The Breakthrough Prize specifically highlights the ATLAS Collaboration’s significant contributions to particle physics, including detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties, studies of rare processes and matter-antimatter asymmetry, and the exploration of nature under the most extreme conditions.
“I am extremely proud to see the extraordinary accomplishments of the LHC collaborations honored 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.”
UC Santa Cruz has been at the forefront of ATLAS research since 1994, with SCIPP researchers contributing to:
- Construction and operation of the Semi-Conductor and Pixel Trackers critical for particle momentum measurements
- Development of machine learning algorithms enabling particle identification and reconstruction
- Leadership in particle detector R&D and physics data analysis, shaping the U.S. contributions to the ATLAS experiment.
The third operation period of the LHC is currently underway and preparations for the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade are advancing rapidly. UCSC’s team of 30 physicists and engineers is deeply involved in preparing ATLAS for its next chapter. The SCIPP laboratories are busy with the construction and testing of the ITk silicon-based tracker project for the High-Luminosity LHC, which will increase collision rates tenfold when it begins operation in 2030.
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