This year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics has been awarded to the four major international collaborations at CERN – ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb. The prize recognizes groundbreaking discoveries about the fundamental structure of matter and the origins of the universe, including research into the quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang. More than 1,000 scientists from around the world are involved in the ALICE experiment – among them, the research groups led by FIAS Fellows Volker Lindenstruth and Ivan Kisel.

ALICE is one of four large-scale research collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. It investigates heavy-ion collisions that recreate conditions similar to those of the early universe. The award, often referred to as the "Oscar of Science," honors the collaborative achievement of a truly international scientific endeavor.

Volker Lindenstruth, former Scientific Chair of FIAS, led the development of a high-performance computing system (EPN cluster) that processes the vast data volumes generated by ALICE in real-time. The team of Ivan Kisel contributed significantly to the development of tracking algorithms essential for reconstructing the paths of particles recorded by the detector.

According to FIAS Director Eckhard Elsen, this award to all four experiments and thus to countless physicists is highly deserved. "I am particularly pleased about the recognition of the two experiments ALICE and LHCb" - they were realized during his time as CERN Research Director. "For Volker Lindenstruth, the prize is a well-deserved success". The bendable vertex detectors, for example, which FIAS Scientific Advisory Board Member Luciano Musa introduced for ALICE ITS3, are nothing short of revolutionary.

The prize money of $3 million will be donated to the CERN & Society Foundation to fund research stays for PhD students from member institutions. ALICE will receive $500,000 of this total.

The award ceremony took place on April 5 in Los Angeles. 

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The Breakthrough Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious and well-funded scientific awards. It is presented annually in the fields of Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences, and Mathematics. The prize aims to celebrate outstanding scientific achievements and to inspire the next generation of researchers.
It was founded by leading tech entrepreneurs, including Sergey Brin (Google), Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Anne Wojcicki (23andMe), and Julia and Yuri Milner (DST Global).