The ATLAS Outstanding Achievement Awards 2014 were given on 9 October to five individuals or teams of physicists and engineers for their contributions during the Large Hadron Collider's first run in all areas of ATLAS except physics analyses.

Nominations were received in 19 different categories from inner detector, calorimeters, run coordination, computing and software to upgrade and outreach. The Collaboration Board Chair Advisory Group made the final selections.

"The award is meant to be helpful in career development. Not only in ATLAS but in life, everyone needs recognition," said Howard Gordon, chair of the Collaboration Board.

Martin Jäkel of CERN was awarded for his contribution to the technical infrastructure and for being a pillar of the ATLAS operations for the whole of Run I.

Chief architects of the Trigger Core Software group – Jörg Stelzer of CERN, Tomasz Bold of the AGH University of Science and Technology Cracow, and Werner Wiedenmann of the University of Wisconsin – were recognized for their work in the design, implementation, commissioning and support of the ATLAS Trigger Core Software.

"The award recognizes the trigger community as a whole, and the many people who work hard so we can take the best data that can be possibly recorded. We are fortunate to work in such a central place of the trigger where we can realize not only our own ideas but can also interact with so many excellent people from trigger, data acquisition and offline communities. This award motivates us to work with equal dedication in the future," said Stelzer.

John Chapman of the University of Cambridge was awarded for his work in ATLAS simulation, especially in developing, maintaining and coordinating the ATLAS pile-up simulation and digitization. He dedicated the award to everyone who works in simulation in the collaboration.

Walter Lampl of the University of Arizona, Stefan Simion of Laboratoire de l'Accelerateur Lineaire Orsay, and Denis Damazio of Brookhaven National Laboratory were awarded for their work on the installation, maintenance and problem solving of the Liquid Argon front-end electronics and reconstruction, condition database, calibration, commissioning and running of the Liquid Argon detector during Run I.

"The many hours of working in the cavern on the detector were a privilege. It is encouraging to get recognition from the collaboration, especially since the following few months will be very challenging for the detector and performance communities before the start of Run II," said Damazio.

The team from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research Dubna -- Nikolay Azaryan, Vitaly Batusov, Mikhail Lyablin – and Dirk Mergelkuhl of CERN were recognized for their contribution in the alignment and survey work on almost all of the ATLAS detector components and supporting structures.

"We are proud to be working in such an outstanding experiment and to feel that we are on the forefront of modern science," said Batusov.

Abha Eli Phoboo