USS Scientists Among Researchers Recognized with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Researchers Pedro Urrejola and Sebastián Olivares, members of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN, contributed to the international scientific effort recognized with one of the world’s most prestigious awards in science.
Researchers Pedro Urrejola and Sebastián Olivares from Universidad San Sebastián (USS) are among the scientists whose work contributed to the collaborations awarded the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The distinction was granted to the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN for their contributions to understanding the fundamental laws of the universe.
Awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, the prize recognizes transformative advances in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences, and Mathematics. In 2025, it honored the four major LHC experiments for their groundbreaking discoveries and precision measurements, including research that has deepened scientific understanding of the Higgs boson.
As members of the ATLAS collaboration, USS physicists Sebastián Olivares and Pedro Urrejola are part of a global scientific community working to address some of the most important questions in modern physics.
Advancing Knowledge of the Higgs Boson
The achievements recognized by the award have enabled scientists to characterize the Higgs boson with greater precision and validate key predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Through increasingly accurate measurements of the particle’s properties, researchers have strengthened confidence in the current theoretical framework while narrowing the search for new physics beyond it.
For the international high-energy physics community, the award recognizes more than a decade of collaborative work involving advanced instrumentation, sophisticated analysis methods, and large-scale international cooperation.
USS Contributions to ATLAS
At USS, Olivares and Urrejola contribute to areas including instrumentation, detector calibration, simulation, and large-scale data analysis. “It is a collective recognition of the many years we have dedicated to ATLAS. My role was to contribute to Higgs boson measurements,” said Sebastián Olivares. “Among the recognitions I have received through my work with ATLAS, this is probably the most significant after the Nobel Prize associated with the Higgs boson discovery.”
Pedro Urrejola has contributed to detector calibration and to the development of the new Inner Tracker, a key component that will allow ATLAS to operate efficiently under the much higher collision rates expected in the next phase of the LHC.
Inspiring Future Scientists
Beyond the scientific achievement, Olivares emphasized the inspirational value of participating in a project of this scale. “For particle physicists, arriving at CERN was like reaching the summit. Today, we feel that we are part of a story that will inspire future generations of students and help bring us closer to new discoveries.”
The recognition highlights the contribution of USS researchers to one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in history and reinforces the University’s commitment to research excellence and international collaboration.