Higgs Hunters wins
University of Oxford Award

Cern’s citizen science project, Higgs Hunters, won a Project Award at this year’s University of Oxford Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards. IRIS students were among 37,000 citizen scientists who analysed data for the project which enables the public to search for theoretical ‘Baby Higgs’ particles from the Large Hadron Collider.

“One of the most innovative aspects to the project was enabling UK school students to analyse the data and perform their own independent research. The students then presented their findings at a conference, alongside researchers from the University. Their findings have been written up as proceedings – these are the first of their kind to be submitted to a CERN experiment” says Professor Barr.

Through the Higgs Hunters project citizen scientists, including young people and adults from over 170 countries, became part of the team to search for interesting features in data from CERN. Over a million citizen science classifications have been made, flagging events that could potentially show Baby Higgs particles.