CERN’s Breakthrough Physics Prize highlights Lund University’s global impact

By johan [dot] lindskoug [at] fysik [dot] lu [dot] se (Johan Lindskoug) - published 11 April 2025

The Atlas research group in Lund. Back: Samuel Kattaya & Lennart Österman. Centre: Georgios Floros, Joey Staa, Hannah Herde & Else Lytken. Front: Xintong Yu, Frank Fielder, Nairit Sur & Lara Calic. Photo: Johan Lindskoug.

The global scientific community celebrates a major achievement as CERN’s four flagship experiments—ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb—receive the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, one of the most prestigious awards in science.

This prize honors discoveries that reshape our understanding of the universe, including how particles gain mass via the Higgs boson, the imbalance between matter and antimatter, and the exploration of physics processes under extreme conditions.

Lund University researchers and students play a vital role in this success, contributing to both the ATLAS and ALICE experiments since the very beginning.

“This is a proud moment for our teams and a powerful recognition of the work we do at the LHC,” says Else Lytken, Head of the Department of Physics and leader of Lund’s ATLAS group. “It reflects years of innovation and motivates us to keep pushing boundaries.”

The award includes funding for PhD scholarships, enabling selected students to spend up to two years conducting research at CERN through the CERN & Society Foundation.

“Being part of ALICE is both challenging and inspiring,” says Kaare Iversen, PhD student in Lund. “This recognition shows the scientific world values what we do, even when we’re deep in data analysis.”

The ALICE group photo from the Quark Matter conference (biggest conference in the field of heavy-ion physics, currently ongoing in Frankfurt — Parts of the Lund ALICE group attending the Quark Matter conference currently ongoing in Frankfurt. from left to right: Roman Nepeivoda, Peter Christiansen, Alice Ohlson, Sushanta Tripathy, Jesper Karlsson Gumprecht & David Silvermyr.

A win for students and supporters alike

The LHC is not just about discovery - it’s a training ground for the next generation of scientists. Students gain hands-on experience in areas like programming, data analysis, detector development, and theoretical modeling.

Support from donors and institutions makes this possible. At Lund, it has already led to 20+ PhD theses and over 100 bachelor’s and master’s theses, as well as innovations in detector technology and software. Lund’s leadership in founding and advancing the ATLAS and ALICE collaborations continues to shape the future of particle physics.

Member of the Alice and Atlas groups in Lund: — More Lund researchers contributing to the Alice & Atlas projects, top row, left to right: Torsten Åkesson, Iaroslav Panasenko, Oxana Smirnova & Ruth Pöttgen. Bottom row, left to right: Kaare Iversen, Sten Åstrand, Erik Wallin & Vincent Hedberg.

Looking ahead

From 2026 to 2030, the LHC will be upgraded into High-Luminosity LHC, increasing its capacity nearly tenfold. This next chapter brings new opportunities for students, researchers, and supporters to contribute to discoveries that could redefine our understanding of the universe. Information regarding projects where LU researchers are involved in ATLAS and ALICE detector development are given in the links below, and also discussed in this LU article:
"Partikelfysiker vill avslöja universums hemligheter" (in Swedish).
Check out a music video made by recent LU students celebrating their detector project:
ALICE TPC Pre-Commissioning Song on YouTube.