Wayne State University announced Wednesday that its scientists and technicians played an important role in the apparent discovery by Europe's Large Hadron Collider of the long-sought Higgs boson, the so-called 'God particle.' A seminar presentation at the CERN physics research center in Geneva, Switzerland disclosed two experiments that observe a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV. And Wayne State said a team of its physicists "made important contributions to the CMS experiment." The WSU team is led by Paul Karchin and Robert Harr, professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Team members include Caroline Milstene, adjunct professor of physics, Mark Mattson, assistant research professor, Alexandre Sakharov, research associate, Alfredo Gutierrez, research engineer and Ph.D. students Christopher Clarke, Sowjanya Gollapinni, Chamath Kottachchi, Pramod Lamichhane and Kevin Siehl. WSU team members are located at three key locations around the world: the CERN laboratory in Geneva, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and at Wayne State's campus. The WSU team contributed to the around-the-clock operation of the experiment and analysis of the data. Team members became experts with different parts of the experimental apparatus including the endcap muon detector, the hadron calorimeter and the high-level trigger computing system.

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/07/04/wayne-state-university-had-role-in-god-particle-discovery/
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http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120705/SCIENCE/207050382/1409/rss36