52 KU-affiliated scientists recognized for Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

LAWRENCE — Fifty-two physicists affiliated with the University of Kansas — both currently and formerly — are on the teams that recently were awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their papers analyzing data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.

The prize, awarded by The Breakthrough Foundation, recognizes outstanding research papers published between 2015-2024 and was awarded to four collaborations (teams named ALICE, CMS, ATLAS and LHCb), which unite thousands of researchers from more than 70 countries. The KU researchers were part of the ALICE and CMS teams, both of which take snapshots of the interactions of particles being collided at the highest achievable energies on earth. These images give a view into the unresolved physical mysteries at the frontier of energy and size.

Among the 52 researchers, 27 are current KU faculty, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, while 23 have since moved on from KU (13 graduate students and 10 postdoctoral researchers). Along with these 50 authors, two researchers are now at KU who earned the distinction at their previous university. A full list of the researchers is below.

Arash Mafi, executive dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at KU, said the prize is a testament to the high level of research being conducted on campus.

“This prestigious honor reflects the significance of KU’s contributions to one of the most ambitious scientific efforts of our time,” Mafi said. “We are proud to have these researchers among the KU community and grateful for the excellence they bring to the College and KU.”

Daniel Tapia Takaki, professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and leader of KU’s ALICE team, has been working on CERN LHC programs for more than 20 years. He said KU’s programs have attracted talented students from around the world to the Lawrence campus, both undergraduate and graduate, with many securing competitive jobs in data science, medical research, national security and other fields.

“This is a special recognition of a wide range of scientific discoveries in both particle and nuclear physics where KU has made significant contributions in the data analyses and technology development,” Tapia Takaki said.

Alice Bean, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and one of the authors, said it was a tremendous honor to be recognized for the many papers she and the CMS collaboration worked on over the years.

“At KU, having great students and postdoctoral researchers has helped us to search for dark matter particles in the quest to understand the mysteries that nature has provided,” she said.

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation will donate the $3 million prize to the CERN & Society Foundation. The prize money will be used to offer grants for doctoral students from KU and the collaborations’ other member institutes to spend research time at CERN, giving them experience in working at the forefront of science as well as new expertise to bring back to their home countries and regions.

The CERN LHC research at KU has been partly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science (DOE), the National Science Foundation and from the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

The list of KU-affiliated authors:

Authors from KU presently at KU (27)

 Faculty (9):  

• Philip Baringer (emeritus)
• Alice Bean
• Michael Murray
• John Ralston
• Christopher Rogan
• Christophe Royon
• Stephen Sanders (emeritus)
• Daniel Tapia Takaki
• Graham Wilson

Graduate students (11): 

• Andres Abreu
• Luis Fernando Alcerro Alcerro
• Saray Arteaga Escatel
• Zachary Flowers
• Amrit Gautam
• Derek Grove
• Jack King
• Margaret Lazarovits
• Cole LeMahieu
• Juan Marquez
• Matthew Nickel

Postdoctoral Researchers (6):

• Justin Anguiano
• Tonatiuh Garcia Chavez
• Tommaso Isidori
• Anisa Khatun
• Georgios Krintiras
• Caleb Smith

Research staff (1):

• Nicola Minafra

Past authors from KU (23)

Graduate students (13): 

• Ayman Al-bataineh
• Cristian Baldenegro Barrera
• Samuel Boren
• James Bowen
• James Castle
• Laurent Forthomme
• Cole Lindsey
• Raymond Patrick Kenny III
• William Mcbrayer
• Lizardo Valencia Palomo
• Erich Schmitz
• Zachary Warner
• Justin Williams

Postdoctoral Researchers (10): 

• Alexander Bylinkin
• Sadia Khalil, Anna Kropivnitskaya
• Devdatta Majumder
• Magdalena Malek
• Michael Pitt
• Sorina Popescu
• Riccardo Salvatico
• Robert Stringer
• Quan Wang

Winning authors now at KU (2)

• Elliot Reynolds (faculty)
• Sahithi Rudrabhatla (postdoctoral researcher).