NIP named as associate member of ATLAS collab
News | Jeorjia Austria
The National Institute of Physics (NIP) is named an associate member of A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS (ATLAS) collaboration at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). This collaboration entails the participation of NIP in the research of particle physics and scientific discoveries at CERN.
NIP’s Dr. Marvin Flores and Dr. Denny Lane Sombillo will lead the High Energy and Nuclear Physics group for the ATLAS experiment which focuses on studying particle physics using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Flores, an assistant professor at NIP, accomplished the year-long qualifying task and became an author to the official ATLAS publications which gave the institute a chance to become an associate member of the collaboration.
Aside from seeing the Philippines in subsequent ATLAS publications, Flores emphasized that being part of the collaboration can “establish an even stronger connection to other universities from around the world who are also part of ATLAS.”
“This collaboration cements NIP further as the leading physics institute in the Philippines now that we have this concrete CERN connection. Students and researchers who dream of going to and eventually doing research at CERN can now be based in NIP instead of looking for opportunities abroad,” Flores said.
Moreover, this means access to restricted data from the ATLAS detector from remnants of proton collisions, which enables other Filipino researchers to use their tools to apply this into their own studies such as in machine learning.
“It would be nice to see the Philippine flag in CERN. Our membership in ATLAS and CERN will benefit not only particle physics people, but many other researchers with interests in machine learning and data science,” NIP director Dr. Wilson Garcia stated.
For the Philippines, Flores noted that the membership in the ATLAS collaboration allows us “to be part of frontier results in particle physics and contribute meaningfully to the ongoing research at CERN instead of being just an outside onlooker to the discoveries being made there.”
“Physics is a joint human behavior that should be enjoyed and [should be] accessible to everyone regardless of one’s country of origin so this particular collaboration will allow the incoming generation of Filipinos who might be interested in particle physics to have access and avenue to grow as competent particle physicists in the future,” Flores said.
The ATLAS collaboration at CERN is one of four major experiments conducted at the LHC which aim to push the frontiers of knowledge by seeking answers to fundamental questions such as the basic building blocks of matter, fundamental forces of nature, and the existence of greater underlying symmetry to our universe.
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