University of Michigan scientists are among the thousands of researchers worldwide honored with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Breakthrough Prizes, sometimes referred to as the Oscars of the sciences, recognize “the disciplines that ask the biggest questions and find the deepest explanations,” according to the award’s website. The prizes were founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.

This year, several experiments running at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, have been honored with the prize’s fundamental physics award.

Research at the LHC is performed by thousands of scientists from hundreds of institutions around the world.

“It’s really exciting to have this recognition of an international scientific collaboration,” said Jianming Qian, professor of physics and member of the LHC’s ATLAS experiment. “Big science needs international collaboration and this is just an example of how productive we can be.”

You may read the rest of the news article on the University of Michigan News website.

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Bing Zhou

Jianming Qian

Junjie Zhu

Thomas Schwarz

Christian Herwig