SBU Researchers Share 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

Members of the Stony Brook University Department of Physics and Astronomy were recently among the recipients of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in recognition of their experimental collaborations with CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The Prize - popularly known as the "Oscars® of Science" - was created to celebrate the wonders of the scientific age by founding sponsors Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.

The Stony Brook researchers, led by Profs. Arnold, Dao, Engelmann (ret.), Hobbs, Jia, McCarthy (ret.), Piacquadio, Rijssenbeek (ret.), Schamberger and Tsybyshev and Dr. Bee, are part of the team working on the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) experiment at the CERN ("Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire" or "European Organization for Nuclear Research") LHC.

The Stony Brook team led and made key contributions to a number of the topics in the prize citation, especially those relating to measurements associated with the Higgs boson particle properties in the decay modes to pairs of bottom quarks, pairs of charm quarks, and muon pairs. The group is also the lead NSF institution for U.S. contributions to ATLAS operations, software, and computing. Three additional teams working on experiments at CERN CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) and LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) were also recipients of the prize.

"Stony Brook's HEP-ATLAS team has contributed significantly to our understanding of physics, from what could be in dark matter to the Higgs boson particle, and I sincerely congratulate them on the work that has earned them this tremendous recognition," said Carl W. Lejuez, executive vice president and provost. "Moreover, this prize recognizes that scientific discoveries come from teams of scientists working together across academic departments, institutions, and countries. These collaborations are critical to advance our understanding of the world around us and to empower us to answer profound questions and begin to address critical issues facing society, the planet, and perhaps even beyond."

The prize was awarded to the collaborations for their "detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties confirming the symmetry-breaking mechanism of mass generation, the discovery of new strongly interacting particles, the study of rare processes and matter-antimatter asymmetry, and the exploration of nature at the shortest distances and most extreme conditions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider."

"The Stony Brook HEP-ATLAS group has been making significant contributions to the ATLAS experiment since the inception of the collaboration and the experiment," said Chang Kee Jung, Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. "I'm glad that the LHC experiments are being recognized for their achievements by the Breakthrough Foundation and very proud of our HEP-ATLAS group members. In the era of mega science, often the contributions by many deserving scientists can be underappreciated. So, the Breakthrough Foundation is doing something that reflects the realities of modern science, and I believe it sends a very positive message to the experimental particle/nuclear physics fields and big science in general."

This year's Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to thousands of researchers from more than 70 countries representing the four experimental collaborations. In consultation with the leaders of the experiments, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation will donate 100 percent of the $3 million prize funds to the CERN & Society Foundation. The prize money will be used by the collaborations to offer grants for doctoral students from member institutes to spend research time at CERN, giving the students experience working at the forefront of science and new expertise to bring back to their home countries and regions.

Stony Brook University Professor John Pardon was a co-recipient of the 2025 New Horizon in Mathematics Breakthrough Prize, given to early-career researchers who have already produced important work in their fields. Pardon was recognized for his research that has produced a number of important results in geometry and topology, particularly in the field of symplectic geometry and pseudo-holomorphic curves, which are certain types of smooth surfaces in manifolds.