HYDERABAD: The 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics — often called the “Oscars of Science” — has been awarded to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at CERN, in which researchers from the University of Hyderabad (UoH) have long played a key role, highlighting India’s growing contribution to global science.
At the heart of this international collaboration is the team led by Dr Bhawna Gomber at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Electronics Science and Technology, School of Physics. Her group made significant contributions to the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, one of the flagship detectors at the LHC.
Explaining CMS’s role within the LHC, Dr Bhawna Gomber told TNIE, “CMS is a general-purpose detector, playing a crucial role in probing both standard model phenomena and physics beyond the Standard Model. In fact, both CMS and its counterpart ATLAS confirmed the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.”
She added, “Our team is involved in both physics analysis—particularly the search for dark matter using proton-proton collision data — and the development of firmware for the calorimeter trigger system, as part of the detector’s Phase-2 upgrade.”
The group’s work spans cutting-edge domains including data analysis, trigger electronics, and high-energy particle interactions, contributing significantly to the success of the CMS project.
Commenting on the global recognition, Dr Gomber said, “This award is a huge honour. Unlike previous acknowledgments, which credited the collaboration as a whole, this time individual contributors — including me and my students — are also named as recipients. It’s a proud moment for all of us.”
She emphasised that such accolades not only motivate students but also spotlight India’s growing contributions to global scientific endeavours.
Dr Gomber leads a team of 10 to 12 members, including four PhD scholars and several master’s students. Her group focuses on research beyond the Standard Model, especially in the search for dark matter particles, large extra dimensions, and anomalous trilinear gauge couplings.
Recent results from dark matter searches, conducted by her doctoral students Bisnupriya Sahu and Shriniketan Acharya, were presented at the 59th Rencontres de Moriond 2025 conference. Concurrently, the team is making major contributions to firmware development for the Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger upgrade of the CMS detector, in preparation for the High-Luminosity LHC.