University of Colombo Academics Among Global Recipients of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

Three academics from the University of Colombo are among the researchers honoured with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded to collaborators of the ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb. This prestigious prize recognizes groundbreaking contributions, including 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 the most extreme conditions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
The academics and graduate students who joined the CMS collaboration (4550 members) through the University of Colombo and the University of Ruhuna supported by a grant given by the Ministry of Science and Technology were among the recipients of this award. Representing the University of Colombo were Professor DUJ Sonnadara, Dr MK Jayananda, Mr Deshitha Wickramarathna, and Mr Balashangar Kailasapathy. From the University of Ruhuna, the honoured members were Professor WGD Dharmaratna, Dr Nadeesha Wickramage, Ms Kalpanie Liyanage and Mr Nimantha Perera.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider

Photo Courtesy: CERN