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Research summary

The fundamental particles and interactions that make up the known Universe are described by the Standard Model of particle physics. However, this model can’t explain why neutrinos have mass—and it completely fails to describe dark matter. If we truly want to understand the composition of the Universe, we need to understand how it works at the smallest level.

As Canada Research Chair in Experimental Particle Physics, Dr. Heather Russell is measuring rare electroweak interactions—along with the unprecedented amount of data collected by the ATLAS experiment—to determine if these interactions are hiding hints of undiscovered particles or interactions. ATLAS is a general-purpose particle physics experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research’s (CERN’s) Large Hadron Collider. Russell and her research team are developing a new type of particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider: one that would be able to detect hidden particles that could be undetected by existing particle detectors.