2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

The CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. (Photo: CERN)

Three academics from University of Colombo are among the researchers honoured with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded to the collaborators of ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb.

This prize recognizes detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties confirming the symmetry-breaking mechanism of mass generation, the discovery of new strongly interacting particles, the study of rare processes and matter-antimatter asymmetry, and the exploration of nature at the shortest distances and most extreme conditions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

The following academics and graduate students who joined the CMS collaboration (4550 members) through the University of Ruhuna and the University of Colombo supported by a grant given by the Ministry of Science and Technology were among the recipients of this award.

University of Ruhuna: WGD Dharmaratna (RUH), Nadeesha Wickramage (RUH), Ms. Kalpanie Liyanage (RUH) and Nimantha Perera

University of Colombo: DUJ Sonnadara (CMB), MK Jayananda (CMB), Deshitha Wickramarathna (CMB) and Balashangar Kailasapathy