Celebrating the outstanding achievements of the ATLAS Collaboration
30 June 2025 | By
The ATLAS Collaboration celebrated the dedication, ingenuity and collaborative spirit of its members at the 8th Outstanding Achievement Awards.
Established in 2014, the Outstanding Achievement Awards honour outstanding contributions made to the collaboration outside the field of physics analysis. They have since become a highlight of the community calendar as a chance to celebrate the vital work that keeps ATLAS running. Starting this year, the awards moved from a biennial to an annual format.
“As our community rises to the dual challenge of operating the detector while pushing ahead with upgrade preparations, our members' technical contributions have become more critical than ever,” says Sarah Demers, co-chair of the Awards Committee. “This is reflected in the sheer volume of outstanding nominations we’ve received, which made it clear that the awards needed to be celebrated every year.”
“While many of these contributions happen behind the scenes, they are absolutely central to the success of our experiment.”
A total of 65 nominations were put forward for this year’s awards, recognising work carried out between November 2023 and November 2024. The nominations spanned 15 categories, including detector operation and calibration, trigger, upgrade, outreach, and software and computing. Following careful consideration by the ATLAS Collaboration Board Chair Advisory Group, seven awards were presented to individuals and teams whose efforts stood out among a strong field of nominees.
“While many of these contributions happen behind the scenes, they are absolutely central to the success of our experiment,” says Ricardo Goncalo, co-chair of the Awards Committee. “These awards are a celebration of the fantastic work done by so many people, which enables the great physics output of the ATLAS Collaboration.”
The award ceremony was held at CERN on 19 June 2025, during the ATLAS Collaboration Week meeting. Awardees joined both in person and remotely from their home institutes around the globe, and each received a plaque in recognition of their achievements.
Meet the 2025 ATLAS Outstanding Achievement Award recipients
For the deployment of the complete Phase-I L1 Muon Endcap Trigger, including the NSW triggers, enabling ATLAS to run at higher pileup and gather more data in 2024: Masato Aoki (KEK), Leesa Brown (Victoria and TRIUMF), George Chatzianastasiou (CERN and BNL), Thiago Costa de Paiva (University of Massachusetts Amherst)(not pictured), Nathan Felt (Harvard)(not pictured), Simone Francescato (Harvard), Eleni Kanellaki (Demokritos)(not pictured), Foteini Kolitsi (uniWA), Audrey Kvam (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Callum McCracken (Vancouver UBC and TRIUMF), Tomoyuki Saito (Tokyo ICEPP), Yoshiaki Tsujikawa (Kyoto).
For advancing the experiment’s computing infrastructure through the integration of HPCs, which contribute substantially to ATLAS’s Run 3 computing power: Doug Benjamin (Brookhaven BNL)(not pictured), Andrej Filipcic (Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana)(not pictured), Michal Svatos (Prague AS), Rod Walker (Munich LMU)(not pictured).
For contributing to the installation, commissioning and operation of the ZDC detector and responding to multiple challenges in November 2024: Brian Andrew Cole (Columbia), Riccardo Longo (Urbana UI).
For the successful design and testing campaign of the HGTD LGAD sensors that led to the start of sensor production: Bojan Hiti (Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana)(not pictured), Alissa Howard (Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana)(not pictured), Xuewei Jia (Beijing IHEP), Mengzhao Li (Beijing IHEP)(not pictured), Chihao Li (CERN), Kuo Ma (USTC)(not pictured), Theodoros Manoussos (CERN), Weiyi Sun (IHEP CAS), Guilherme Tomio Saito (Universidade de São Paulo), Iskra Velkovska (Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana), Xiao Yang (USTC)(not pictured), Mei Zhao (Beijing IHEP)(not pictured).
For management of pixel code and databases, improving reliability and speed of detector calibrations, contributions to operations, and substantial improvements to system stability and monitoring in 2024: Tobias Bisanz (Dortmund).
For years of exceptional management of ATLAS operations, including significant interventions in 2024 to manage the recovery of the ATLAS infrastructure in the face of cooling challenges, enabling excellent data-taking efficiency: André Rummler (CERN).
For successful operation of the LAr detector, including contributions to online software and detector control systems, while commissioning the digital trigger: Huacheng Cai (Pittsburgh), Etienne Fortin (CERN)(not pictured), Davide Mungo (Toronto), Pavol Strizenec (Kosice)(not pictured).
