According to Karchin, "This collaboration will mount an exciting and prominent experiment to use the Large Hadron Collider to search for the Higgs boson, which could explain the origin of mass of elementary particles, and to study the previously unexplored million-million volt energy scale of nature, over the next ten years."

This physics research facility, also known as CERN, will bring 9000 researchers from around the globe to work together to bring new and profound insights into the workings of our universe. Experiments will address questions such as what gives matter its mass, what the invisible 96% of the universe is made of, why nature prefers matter to antimatter, and how matter evolved from the first instants of the universe's existence.

"With Wayne State's entry into the Compact Muon Solenoid Collaboration, our Ph.D. students will have the opportunity to conduct cutting edge research in particle physics for their dissertations," commented Dr. Ratna Naik, chair of the Department of Physics at Wayne State. "Undergraduate students will also have direct access to this international project, thus giving them an exciting learning opportunity that will enhance their studies," she added.

The addition of the Wayne State team was announced on Friday, February 29 in Geneva, Switzerland, with Professor Karchin in attendance. The Large Hadron Collider will become operational this summer and may achieve the highest energy elementary particle collisions ever obtained in a laboratory setting, by the end of this year.

"The invitation to collaborate at this prestigious physics facility will significantly expand on Drs. Karchin and Harr's research that has continuously been funded by the Department of Energy for the past 12 years," said Dr. Gloria Heppner, associate vice president for Research at WSU. "We are pleased to support this new research project that will expand our knowledge in the field of high energy physics," Heppner added.

For more information about the European Center for Nuclear Research, visit http://public.web.cern.ch/public/welcome.html.

Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world.