Wayne State Physics professors honored with the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

On April 7th, several faculty members from our Department of Physics and Astronomy were honored with the distinguished Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their contributions to the ALICE and CMS research with CERN labs.

This prestigious award comes with a $3 million prize, which, according to CERN, "will be donated to the CERN & Society Foundation. The prize money will fund grants for doctoral students from the collaborations’ member institutes, allowing them to conduct research at CERN. This opportunity will provide valuable experience at the forefront of science and enable them to bring new expertise back to their home countries and regions."

This generous donation will support groundbreaking research worldwide, advancing the study of hadrons, electrons, muons, and photons produced in the collisions of heavy nuclei —critical to understanding the fundamental processes that form matter in our universe.

The award was accepted on behalf of the collaborations by the spokespersons serving at the time the data was submitted for consideration in July 2024: Andreas Hoecker (former ATLAS spokesperson), Patricia McBride (former CMS spokesperson), Marco Van Leeuwen (ALICE spokesperson), and Vincenzo Vagnoni (LHCb spokesperson)

We are proud to recognize the contributions of our own faculty members who played vital roles in the celebrated CMS and ALICE experiments:

Robert Harr

Paul Karchin

Bill Llope

Claude Pruneau

Joern Putschke

Sergei Voloshin

Rene Bellwied (former Wayne State professor)

Let’s wish them a warm congratulations for their accomplishments—and to more breakthroughs ahead!