UAE universities convene for global physics experiment

In one of the largest collaborative efforts in science, three UAE-based universities will participate as a Cluster Institution in the ATLAS experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) will represent the UAE along with the University of Sharjah and the United Arab Emirates University.

ATLAS is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, one of the world's largest and most respected centres for scientific research.

An agreement was signed between CERN, Geneva, the UAE ATLAS Cluster and the universities to mark the beginning of the collaboration.

ATLAS team leader Marta Losada, who delivered a keynote at NYUAD, was a part of the wide-scale international ATLAS collaboration that discovered the Higgs Boson in 2012, an elementary component in the physics framework that defines everything in the known universe. The observation of the particle was the last hidden component on the journey of solidifying the fundamental model of physics.

Losada commented: "NYUAD has huge potential, I only had to come here once to recognise it and this collaboration is an unparalleled opportunity for the advancement of science at NYUAD and the development of research capacity in the UAE."

ATLAS is a collaboration of physicists, engineers, technicians, students, and support staff from around the world that continues discovering some of the most important innovative developments in technology and physics in the search for the unknown, exploring and discovering new phenomena beyond existing theoretical predictions.

ATLAS physicists are studying the fundamental constituents of matter to understand the rules behind their interactions. Their research has led to ground-breaking discoveries, like the Higgs Boson.