UH Scientists Honored for Advancing Early-Universe Research Through CERN’s ALICE Collaboration
A group of physicists from the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics has received the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics—one of the world’s most prestigious scientific honors—for their work on A Large Ion Collider Experiment, known as ALICE. The international collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider was recognized for its groundbreaking insights into the strong force and the conditions of the early universe.
The Breakthrough Prize ceremony, held April 7 at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, brought together scientists, celebrities and tech leaders for a red-carpet celebration widely known as the “Oscars of Science.” Hosted by Emmy Award winner James Corden, the event honored scientific achievement and the spirit of curiosity-driven discovery. UH’s honorees were among thousands of researchers from more than 70 countries recognized for their contributions to CERN's four main experimental collaborations: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb.
“The UH group has contributed significantly to this program by leading efforts in measuring collective phenomena in the quark-gluon plasma and exotic matter states,” said Rene Bellwied, M.D. Anderson Professor of Physics. “These existed only briefly during the hottest and densest phases in the expanding universe.”
Through high-energy heavy-ion collisions, the ALICE collaboration seeks to recreate and study the primordial conditions that followed the Big Bang. Current UH faculty and researchers named in the award are Bellwied, Adel Bensaoula, Fabio Catalano, Wenqing Fan, Sabrina Hernandez, Iris Likmeta, Lawrence Pinsky, Omar Vazquez Rueda, Fernanda Cabrera Torres and Anthony Timmins.
In addition, 21 former members of the UH ALICE group were recognized for contributions made at the University between 2014 and 2024. Among those honored were Negin Alizadevhandchali, Livio Bianchi, David Chinellato, Fernando Flor, Dhevan Gangadharan, Alek Hutson, Satyajit Jena, Muqing Jin, Anders Knospe, Jacobb Martinez, Marianna Mazzilli, Anjaly Menon, Corey Myers, Surya Pathak, Raquel Quishpe, Oveis Sheibani, Jihye Song, Cristina Terrevoli, Stefano Trogolo, Ejiro Umaka and Michael Weber.
The 2025 ceremony emphasized the importance of global scientific collaboration. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Breakthrough Prize co-founder Yuri Milner presented the physics award, describing the recipients’ work as “a quest driven by pure curiosity” and “humanity’s fundamental mission.”
The award show will premiere on YouTube on April 12, 2025, at 2pm CT.
- Kristoffer Smith, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics