CERN’s Main Auditorium hosted the ATLAS Collaboration’s 2025 Thesis Awards ceremony on February 19, 2026, recognizing the contributions of eight PhD students to the ongoing function at the ATLAS experiment.
The annual awards celebrate the critical role students play in the experiment, spanning areas from physics analysis and detector operations to software development and upgrade projects. This year’s selection was made from a pool of over 200 eligible theses, narrowed down to 36 formal applications before the committee finalized its choices.
The 2025 ATLAS Thesis Award recipients are: Takumi Aoki of the University of Tokyo (Japan); Kartik Deepak Bhide of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany); Antonio Jesús Gómez Delegido of Universitat de València (Spain); Simon Florian Koch of the University of Oxford (UK); Elena Mazzeo of Università degli studi di Milano (Italy); Ryan Roberts of the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA); Stephen Nicholas Swatman of the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands); and Elliot Watton of the University of Glasgow and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK).
“Students are the ‘soul’ of the ATLAS Collaboration,” said Jean‑François Arguin, Chair of the ATLAS Thesis Awards Committee. “They make up a third of ATLAS authors and carry out much of the essential work that keeps ATLAS at the frontiers of scientific research. The quality and breadth of this year’s nominations made the committee’s decision especially challenging, and we congratulate all nominees for their outstanding work.”
During the ceremony, the awardees presented highlights of their research and operational contributions, detailing challenges encountered during their studies. The presentations included acknowledgements of the supervisors, colleagues, friends, and family who supported their work.
This marks the sixteenth year of the ATLAS Thesis Awards, a tradition established in 2010. The awards have tracked the experiment’s progress through the work of its students, many of whom have progressed to leadership positions within the collaboration. The ATLAS Collaboration itself comprises over 5500 members and 3000 scientific authors from more than 170 institutions in 40 countries, according to CERN documentation.
“In many ways, the future of our Collaboration is visible in our students’ theses,” Arguin concluded. “They showcase the new ideas, energy and leadership that will guide our field in years ahead. On behalf of the Thesis Awards Committee, I can confidently state that the future of particle physics is in capable hands!”
Currently, Andreas Hoecker of CERN serves as the ATLAS Spokesperson, a role he assumed on March 1, 2023, and will hold until February 28, 2025. Stephane Willocq of Massachusetts is the Deputy Spokesperson, also serving a term ending February 28, 2025. Davide Costanzo, currently chair of the Collaboration Board, oversees the collaboration of 177 institutions across 44 countries.