Scientists from the University of Oxford are among thousands of researchers worldwide honoured 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. Included amongst the awarded are two Schmidt AI in Science Fellows: Holly Pacey and Brian Moser.
ATLAS is one of the largest and most complex scientific instruments ever built. As a general-purpose particle detector measuring over 40 metres in length and around 25 metres in height, 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 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.
Schmidt AI in Science Fellow, Dr Holly Pacey says:
It is a great pleasure to have the importance of our research exploring the smallest scales of the universe at the Large Hadron Collider recognised through a Breakthrough prize. Working together with so many other talented researchers all over the world, to recreate and capture moments just after the big bang at the awe-inspiring ATLAS experiment, has been a privilege. I hope that the prize inspires the public and our next generation of scientists to learn more about particle physics and the LHC. I look forward to next analysing our new, even larger, dataset with exciting machine learning techniques, to better understand the Higgs boson, search for elusive dark matter, and delve further into the unknown.
Holly will shortly be leaving the Schmidt AI in Science Fellowship for a new Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford, whilst Dr Brian Moser started his new role as a Junior Professor for Experimental Particle Physics at the University of Freiburg in January 2025.
