Marie Curie Actions: Inspiring Researchers - Imdea

Higgs boson is the last missing piece of the Standard Modelbut a central one since it is at the origin of the particle masses.Physicists hope that the world’s largest particle accelerator,the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, will help to fi nally catcha glimpse of it. One of many breakthroughs in high-energyphysics the network contributed to lies in the developmentof the Higgs phenomenology and in the identifi cation of thepossible dynamics associated to this boson (new strong forces,new space dimensions, string theory).‘Other achievements have been obtained in astrophysics andcosmology,’ summarises Professor Antoniadis. ‘The networkdeveloped new methods for computing primordial energydensity fl uctuations in the spectrum of light emitted shortly afterthe Big Bang. And we also analysed dark matter candidatesto account for the missing mass of the universe.’Rewarded for outstanding researchAll of this research was conducted by 20 young researchershired by the network, and their various supervisors, at12 renowned research institutes and universities. It resultedin an amazing 491 publications that have already receivedmore than 10 000 citations in the very short period since thework of the Quest for Unifi cation teams ended. What is more,‘several members of the teams have received scientifi c prizesand awards,’ Professor Antoniadis reports. ‘This includes theUniversity of Berne Albert Einstein Medal, the Danni HeinemannPrize of the American Physical Society, a Humboldt award anda Humboldt Fellowship.‘All young researchers were very well integrated into the researchprogramme of the network and contributed in substantial waysto the above achievements,’ Professor Antoniadis goes on tosay. ‘They had benefi cial interactions with the other postdocsand students, and they participated actively in the scientifi cactivity of their host institutes. Furthermore, they have beenencouraged to travel and get contacts with other networknodes and establish collaborations. They also attended andpresented their works to major network meetings, as well asto international conferences and workshops related to thenetwork research activity.’330