Thirty-two past and present researchers at the University of Notre Dame, including faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers, were named co-recipients of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for detailed measurements of the Standard Model of particle physics, which helps describe how the basic building blocks of matter interact.

“The Breakthrough Prize is wonderful recognition of our field of experimental high energy physics, and in some sense a validation of all the time, effort and resources that have been spent on our experiments,” said Mitchell Wayne, professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Notre Dame.

The University has played a strong role in Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The CMS and another collaboration, A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) discovered the Higgs Boson subatomic particle in 2012. The discovery allowed physics researchers to confirm the Standard Model and allowed them to start making precision measurements of its properties.

In addition to CMS and ATLAS, two other collaborations at the LHC shared in the $3 million prize, which was awarded for work completed after the initial discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Marc Osherson, assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, was a first-year graduate student when the Higgs was discovered in 2012. The discovery of the particle “made the field feel particularly alive and important,” Osherson said. He was excited to dig into the second round of data, known as Run 2, expecting considerable, consequential new answers to physics questions, including supersymmetry — a theory in which the equations for force and the equations for matter are identical.

Though researchers did not find evidence for supersymmetry, they did make other discoveries. These ranged from precision measurements of important physical constants and discoveries of never-before-seen composite particles. They also completed a number of searches for unexplained phenomena or new observations.

“We are extremely honored to receive this award for everything we have done with the Run 2 data," Osherson said. “Our discoveries are invaluable inputs to theoretical physicists as they try to understand the mysteries of the Universe.

“For all this quiet, persistent effort to be recognized with such a prestigious award is fantastic.”

One million dollars of the prize money was allocated to the CMS Collaboration and donated to the CERN & Society Foundation. The funds will establish grants for doctoral students from member institutes, supporting their research stays at CERN.

A full list of the CMS laureates can be found here.

“The fact that the prize is shared among so many physicists shows the world how ‘big science’ is done, not with a single researcher in a laboratory, but by teamwork and collaboration over many years,” Wayne said.

The past and present principal investigators in Notre Dame’s High Energy Particle Physics group, who include Professor Colin Jessop, Professor Kevin Lannon, Osherson, Professor Emeritus Randal Ruchti, and Wayne, have all held leadership positions within the CMS collaboration at one time or another, Wayne said.

“Our high-energy collider physics group is an essential part of the CMS collaborations, and I congratulate them on this highly deserved recognition,” said Morten Eskildsen, professor and chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy.

The Breakthrough Prize was founded in 2012 by tech leaders including Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, Anne Wojcicki, Julia Milner, and Yuri Milner.

Notre Dame’s research with the CMS collaboration has been funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The University’s 32 co-recipients of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize who are present or former faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers include:

Garvita Agarwal
Reyer Band
Sergi Castells
Giacomo Cucciati
Abhishek Das
Reza Goldouzian
Arjan Hendrix Heering
Michael Hildreth
Kenyi Hurtado Anampa
Todor Ivanov
Colin Jessop
Anton Karneyeu
Kevin Lannon
John Lawrence
Nikitas Loukas
Dylan Lutton
Dario Mapelli
Nancy Marinelli
Joseph Mariano
Alan Malta Rodrigue
Christopher McGrady
Thomas McCauley
Connor Moore
Hannah Nelson
Marc Osherson
Andrea Piccinelli
Randal Ruchti
Yuri Musienko
Austin Townsend
Mitchell Wayne
Yuyi Wan
Henry Yockey

Anna Salentine provided research assistance for this report.

Originally published by Deanna Csomo Ferrell at science.nd.edu on April 11, 2025.