Latest news with #2025BreakthroughPrize
New Indian Express
28-05-2025
- Science
- New Indian Express
University of Hyderabad in spotlight after LHC bags ‘science Oscar'
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.
The Hindu
30-04-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Breakthrough Prize 2025 awarded to CMS collaboration featuring IIT Hyderabad physicists
Researchers from IIT Hyderabad are part of the team that received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS). The researchers are part of an experimental collaboration working on the CMS experiment. The 2025 Breakthrough Prize has been awarded to the co-authors of publications from the large experimental collaborations based at the Large Hadron Collider at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which has the four major experiments of CMS, ATLAS, ALICE and LHCb. According to IIT-H, researchers, including faculty members and students, from the Department of Physics at IIT Hyderabad have been actively working on the CMS experiment, on research areas such as studies of the Higgs boson, search for new fundamental particles and forces, and particle reconstruction at detectors among others. The Breakthrough Prize 2025 lists Assistant Professor at IIT-H Saranya Ghosh, a member of the CMS collaboration, as one of the laureates, according to IITH. Mr. Ghosh, elated at the achievement, said the prize recognises years of dedicated effort and stressed that scientific progress that can be achieved through collaborative efforts. He hoped that young researchers and students will be further motivated to pursue fundamental research. IITH Director B.S. Murty, recognising the collective efforts and dedication of thousands of scientists, said it was an honour to be part of a global collaboration that is expanding the frontiers of understanding the universe. He expressed satisfaction that the role of India and IITH in high-energy physics research was growing.
Newsroom
26-04-2025
- Science
- Newsroom
The ‘atom smasher' of Auckland University
When Professor David Krofcheck got an email congratulating him on winning the Oscar of the science world, he dismissed it as a hoax. 'I thought it was a scam, I thought it was a phishing email,' recalls Krofcheck, nuclear physicist at Auckland University. 'Yeah right, I've won the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.' Then he started to believe that it was 'bizarre enough to be real'. The prize for Krofcheck and his 13,507 colleagues who have worked to unravel the mysteries of the universe was presented at an Academy Awards-style ceremony in LA, attended by a who's who of Hollywood and science-dom. It recognises their years of work on the world's greatest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider in CERN near Geneva. Known as the largest smasher of atoms, the collider reveals information about the fundamental properties of matter, energy and the early universe. Krofcheck played a key role in the breakthrough discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 through his work on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector, a giant camera that records particle collisions. The CMS detector is one of four research collaborations that the 13,508 Breakthrough Prize-winning scientists worked on. 'It must be like building the pyramid,' he jokes. 'Pharoah never thanked the slaves for building the pyramid but this is like the group award for everyone who was able to contribute building the detector, getting it to work right, taking data, analysing the data, publishing the data and finding new and wonderful things, at least for physics.' Krofcheck's office overlooking Auckland's skyscrapers is a long way from CERN and his fellow scientists scattered around the world. In his office his shelves are stacked with books that tell the story of his lifelong curiosity about the beginnings of the universe after the Big Bang. He has several Christmas cards from CERN pinned to his wall and on his desk a small stack of books he calls his talking point for visitors – the one on top is Alan Turing: The Enigma, the book that inspired the Benedict Cumberbatch film The Imitation Game. 'These books are like conversation starters, things that are important for our field and things that interest me about the origin of the universe, the origin of the technology we use to study nuclear and particle physics.' Sitting on a shelf are mugs from the many laboratories and universities he has attended. One of three rocks on the windowsill is a geode, a gift from his daughter. He has one half and she has the other. 'They fit perfectly together. That's kind of a reminder, when I'm feeling frustrated or sad, I pick up my daughter's geode and know that she has the other half.' As the only scientist in his field in New Zealand, Krofcheck is often called on to talk to the media about Fukushima's nuclear meltdown, North Korea's nuclear weapons and the Russians capturing nuclear power plants in Ukraine, so he is delighted to speak to The Detail about 'something pleasant'. When he's at CERN he sits in a control room several kilometres from the Large Hadron Collider. 'We see signals coming from individual detectors. I look on my computer screen and I can see how big the electrical signals are, how fast the electrical signals are coming from these particles. 'We keep watching them to make sure the rate doesn't get too high, so we're collecting so much data that we can't write it fast enough. Or suddenly the signal disappears which is a disaster, which means somehow the beam has gone off target.' Krofcheck was involved in solving that problem, alongside Professor Phil Butler of Canterbury University and his son Professor Anthony Butler of Otago University by ensuring the safe functioning of the US$550 million CMS detector. By preventing the beam from going off target, data could be safely recorded and that in turn led to the Higgs boson discovery. His work with the Butlers led him to the radiology company, MARS Bioimaging, which has received millions of dollars in government funding for development. Krofcheck says that is the everyday application of the years of research at the Hadron Collider. But for him it is pure curiosity. 'There's never an end. That's the beauty,' he says. 'I love seeing the advancing story of more and more things fitting together so you can make predictions as to why stars might behave, for example, or black holes might behave. 'We need this knowledge generated from accelerators on earth but it gives us a grasp of the bigger picture of what's happening in the universe.' Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
RNZ News
25-04-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
The Auckland Uni nuclear physicist unlocking secrets of the universe
Professor David Krofcheck Photo: Sharon Brettkelly When Professor David Krofcheck got an email congratulating him on winning the Oscar of the science world, he dismissed it as a hoax. "I thought it was a scam, I thought it was a phishing email," recalls Krofcheck, nuclear physicist at the University of Auckland. "Yeah right, I've won the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics." Then he started to believe that it was "bizarre enough to be real". The prize for Krofcheck and his 13,507 colleagues, who have worked to unravel the mysteries of the universe, was presented at an Academy Awards-style ceremony in LA, attended by a who's who of Hollywood and science-dom. It recognises their years of work on the world's greatest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, near Geneva. Known as the largest smasher of atoms, the collider reveals information about the fundamental properties of matter, energy and the early universe. Krofcheck played a key role in the breakthrough discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 through his work on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector, a giant camera that records particle collisions. The CMS detector is one of four research collaborations that the 13,508 Breakthrough Prize-winning scientists worked on. "It must be like building the pyramid," he jokes. "Pharoah never thanked the slaves for building the pyramid, but this is like the group award for everyone who was able to contribute building the detector, getting it to work right, taking data, analysing the data, publishing the data and finding new and wonderful things, at least for physics." Krofcheck's office, overlooking Auckland's skyscrapers, is a long way from CERN and his fellow scientists who are scattered around the world. In his office his shelves are stacked with books that tell the story of his lifelong curiosity about the beginnings of the universe after the Big Bang. He has several Christmas cards from CERN pinned to his wall, and on his desk a small stack of books that he calls his talking point for visitors - the one on top is Alan Turing: The Enigma , the book that inspired the Benedict Cumberbatch film The Imitation Game . "These books are like conversation starters, things that are important for our field and things that interest me about the origin of the universe, the origin of the technology we use to study nuclear and particle physics." Sitting on a shelf are mugs from the many laboratories and universities he has attended. One of three rocks on the windowsill is a geode, a gift from his daughter. He has one half and she has the other. "They fit perfectly together. That's kind of a reminder, when I'm feeling frustrated or sad, I pick up my daughter's geode and know that she has the other half." As the only scientist in his field in New Zealand, Krofcheck is often called on to talk to the media about Fukushima's nuclear meltdown, North Korea's nuclear weapons and the Russians capturing nuclear power plants in Ukraine, so he is delighted to speak to The Detail about "something pleasant". When he's at CERN he sits in a control room several kilometres from the Large Hadron Collider. "We see signals coming from individual detectors. I look on my computer screen and I can see how big the electrical signals are, how fast the electrical signals are coming from these particles. "We keep watching them to make sure the rate doesn't get too high, so we're collecting so much data that we can't write it fast enough. Or suddenly the signal disappears, which is a disaster, which means somehow the beam has gone off target." Krofcheck was involved in solving that problem, alongside Professor Phil Butler of the University of Canterbury and his son Professor Anthony Butler of the University of Otago, by ensuring the safe functioning of the US $550 million CMS detector. By preventing the beam from going off target, data could be safely recorded and that in turn led to the Higgs boson discovery. His work with the Butlers led to the radiology company MARS Bioimaging , which has received millions of dollars in government funding for development. Krofcheck says that is the everyday application of the years of research at the Hadron Collider. But for him it is pure curiosity. "There's never an end. That's the beauty," he says. "I love seeing the advancing story of more and more things fitting together so you can make predictions as to why stars might behave, for example, or black holes might behave. "We need this knowledge generated from accelerators on earth but it gives us a grasp of the bigger picture of what's happening in the universe." Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter . Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
CBC
07-04-2025
- Health
- CBC
Canadian scientist wins Breakthrough Prize for discovery of hormone used in Ozempic, Mounjaro
A Canadian researcher has won a 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for discovering the GLP-1 hormone used in diabetes and obesity medications — including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro — that have changed the lives of millions of people around the world. Dr. Daniel Drucker, an endocrinologist and a clinician-scientist at the University of Toronto and the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health, shares the $3 million US prize with four colleagues from the United States and Denmark. They were all involved in the development of the now-famous drugs manufactured by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. Drucker and three co-winners made discoveries about glucagon-like peptide-1 in their labs. The other recipient of the award, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, who works for Novo Nordisk, led the way in developing it into medications. The Breakthrough Prizes, often referred to as the "Oscars of Science," were handed out Saturday in Los Angeles for categories including fundamental physics and mathematics, in addition to life sciences. The Breakthrough Foundation says the prizes were created to "celebrate the wonders of our scientific age." Another Canadian, Maaike van Kooten of National Research Council Canada, shared a $100,000 US prize called New Horizons in Physics with two international colleagues for work in optics to view exoplanets. In an interview in the week prior to the event, Drucker said the prize is meaningful because it's awarded by other scientists and "gets a lot of attention in the scientific community." "We have students and trainees and awards like this tell them that the world is watching and thinks the work is meritorious. And I think that's just great for morale and for young people," he said. Drucker began his journey studying genetic sequencing of glucagon-like peptides at a lab in Boston in the 1980s, then returned to Canada and continued his work at the University of Toronto. He spoke with The Canadian Press about those early days, what he thinks about how the resulting medications have changed the world's view of obesity and what other health issues GLP-1 might address in the future. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. When you started at that lab in Boston, why were you studying this particular hormone? "There were probably about a dozen projects in the lab at that time. So some people were working on pituitary hormones. Some people were on basic cell biology projects. Other people were working on different genes and glucagon was one of the projects in the lab.... It just so happened when I got there, they said, 'OK Drucker, you work on the glucagon gene.' [It] could have been another gene [and] you never would have heard from me again. Were there any key moments where you thought, 'Wow, this is a big deal?' "I don't think there was any one 'Eureka!' moment, but I will say the potential importance dawned on me when I walked into the lab one day and my notebooks were gone. And I said, 'Oh my gosh, someone broke into the lab and stole my notebooks.' And then it turned out no — my supervisor [and a fellow prize winner], Joel Habener, took my notebooks because he was excited enough about the results to file a patent." When did you come to the University of Toronto? "I came back in 1987.... In 1996, when we and others discovered that GLP-1 inhibits food intake, that was in my lab in Toronto, and we've done experiments on heart disease and inflammation and kidney disease and liver disease. So I literally have been working on this for 40 years." When did Novo Nordisk (manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy) become involved? "I think the big companies, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, and even other companies were trying from the beginning to develop medicines based on GLP-1. But we learned through some painful lessons that if you give too much GLP-1 too quickly, people throw up. It's still a side effect today, right? Some people just don't feel well and they have some nausea and vomiting. And so it took the pharmaceutical industry quite a while to figure out how to make GLP-1 last longer so it's not broken down, how to give small amounts to start off with, how to slowly build up the dose, et cetera. And that took years to do." What are you working on now and what are some other applications for GLP-1 drugs? "If we just look in the last couple of years, beyond lowering blood sugar and beyond reducing body weight, we have seen that these medicines reduce the rates of heart attacks and strokes and reduce the rates of diabetic kidney disease and are helpful for people with obstructive sleep apnea and reduce disability in people with arthritis and prevent the development of severe metabolic liver disease. And there are trials underway in Parkinson's disease, in Alzheimer's disease, in substance use disorders. "So I kind of look at this and I go, 'Wow, how does that happen? What are the things that GLP-1 is doing in the brain or in the blood vessels or in the kidney to improve the health of these organs?' So we're really focused on this aspect of GLP-1, including how GLP-1 reduces inflammation, which we think is a major part of the benefits that GLP-1 brings to the table." Are cardiovascular benefits because GLP-1 medication reduces weight or manages diabetes and that improves cardiovascular health? "What we're starting to see is that in many of the trials, the benefits don't strictly correlate with weight loss or blood sugar control. So there's no question [that] getting your blood sugar normal if you have Type 2 diabetes, reducing your body weight if it's too high, that's helpful. "But when we actually look at the trials and we see who has the benefit and who doesn't, there's not a perfect correlation with blood sugar control or weight loss. And so we think there are, you know, independent actions of GLP-1, perhaps through reduction of inflammation, that are also beneficial. And this is exactly what we try and study in the lab." We're now seeing a culture shift in how we view obesity. What do you make of that? "It's a very complex discussion. So let's say 10 years ago, we had a very understandable movement, which was 'healthy at any size.' Don't focus on your weight per se, focus on your health, which I still think is a very powerful message. And part of that messaging was because we didn't have solutions other than bariatric surgery to allow people to become healthier, perhaps at a lower body weight.... And in society, there tends to be a segment of our society that looks at people living with obesity and says, 'Well, you know, it's just willpower. If you really wanted to lose weight, you could, you're just not trying' or 'You're lazy,' or you know, 'You're weak.' "And we know that many of these people that we see in clinical practice have been on very calorie-reduced diets and working out and doing everything that we asked them to do. But their brains are defending a higher body weight.... And now with the GLP-1 medicines, we see that... we can help people lose weight. And I think this is very powerful because the people who were struggling before who could not do it by themselves can now lose 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 pounds." Do you have any trepidation or thoughts about these drugs being used by people who may not need them? "Well, you're speaking to the person who worries about everything, so of course I have concerns... It's been a little bit like The Hunger Games. People have to phone six pharmacies and find one that had a month's worth of drugs and then drive as fast as they could to that drugstore to get them, which is not great. And so while that's happening, to see other people getting a prescription because Uncle Harry's wedding is coming up in two months and they just want to lose a little bit of weight so they can look a little more fit at Uncle Harry's wedding — you know, as a physician, I say, 'Wait a sec, this person living with heart disease and Type 2 diabetes needs these medicines to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Maybe that should be a priority as a society over you looking a little better for Uncle Harry's wedding.' So that's been one dilemma. "And then the other big challenge that we still have is these medicines are very expensive. In many jurisdictions, we don't have everyone with access to a drug plan. We don't [have] every drug plan agreeing to reimburse for the medicines. "And finally... we don't have clinical trials on healthier people without diabetes, without a higher body weight that are studied [to know], 'Well, are there any particular side effects in this group of individuals?' They weren't studied in the clinical trials. Is there something we should be worried about, going on and off the drugs when you want to lose that healthy? We don't know. And so we have to always be mindful of what we don't know about the safety of these medicines."
