Motivated. Outstanding. Enthusiastic. These are the criteria used when selecting the recipients of the ATLAS PhD Grant. It’s a tough competition.

2016 has been a record-breaking year. The LHC surpassed its design luminosity and produced stable beams a staggering 60% of the time – up from 40% in previous years, and even surpassing the hoped for 50% threshold. While all of the ATLAS experiment rejoiced – eager to analyse the vast outpouring of data from the experiment – its computing experts had their work cut out for them.

HiggsHunters is the first mass-participation citizen science project for the Large Hadron Collider, allowing non-experts to get directly involved in physics analysis. Since its launch in 2014 on the Zooniverse platform, over 30,000 people from 179 countries have participated in the project. Their work has led to the project’s first publication on arXiv.

Whether searching for signs of new physics, or making precise measurements of known interactions, it is essential to know the total number of proton-proton collisions that the LHC delivers in ATLAS. This parameter, known as “luminosity”, is a vital part of ATLAS analysis.

The 2016 ATLAS Outstanding Achievement Awards ceremony was held at CERN on 20 October. Now in its third year, the awards give recognition to excellent contributions made to the collaboration, with an emphasis on activities carried out in the first year of Run 2.

The ATLAS Open Data platform is inspiring new ways to teach high-energy physics. Universities can incorporate the data into their curriculum, giving their students hands-on analysis experience and introducing them to the world of research.

For many students, summer means sun and beach volleyball. For some, though, it is an opportunity to learn at ATLAS! Thanks to CERN’s Summer Student Programme, every year dozens of university students come to ATLAS to spend their holidays in this unique environment. During these three months they alternate between lectures and work, always supported by their supervisors. This summer, ATLAS hosted 50 students from 31 different countries. Here are some of their stories.

The International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) wraps up its 38th edition today in Chicago. For ATLAS, it brings to a close an intense period of analysis. The collaboration presented 64 new sets of results at the conference, ranging from detector performance studies to measurements of Standard Model processes to searches for new physics. All in all, a rather stellar turnout.

Results using record-breaking 2016 data will be presented at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Chicago, 3-10 August.

On Friday 29 July, the ATLAS experiment at CERN released the data from 100 trillion proton-proton collisions to the public. This includes the world’s first open release of 8 TeV data, gathered from the Large Hadron Collider in 2012, making it the most current high-energy physics open data.

The Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP2016) conference kicked off today in Lund, Sweden. Held annually, the LHCP conference is an opportunity for experimental and theoretical physicists to discuss results from across the high-energy physics community. From Standard Model Physics and Heavy Ion Physics to Supersymmetry and other Beyond Standard Model investigations, the conference unites the disciplines to examine recent progress and consider future developments.

From techno beats to classical melodies, from jazz swinging to pop and rock riffs – the ATLAS experiment can play them all. Thanks to Quantizer, a platform that translates ATLAS events into notes and rhythms, one of the most complex scientific instruments in the world will not only search for new physics, but also generate music.

Spring is now in full bloom at the ATLAS experiment which recorded the year’s first collisions for physics on Monday, 9 May. Event displays from these collisions were immediately streaming on the ATLAS live website, with some shared across social media platforms.

ATLAS is back and better than ever! With 13 TeV beams circulating in the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS experiment is now recording data for physics. This milestone marks the start of the second year of “Run 2” as ATLAS continues its exploration of 13 TeV energy frontier.

This morning the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) circulated the first proton-proton beams of 2016 around its 27 kilometre circumference. The beams were met with great enthusiasm in the ATLAS Control Centre as they passed through the ATLAS experiment.

This year’s 50th anniversary edition of the “Moriond Electroweak and Unified Theories” conference at La Thuile in Italy featured the presentation and discussion of first results from the LHC full-year 2015 data samples (“Run 2”) collected by the LHC experiments at unprecedented 13 TeV proton-proton collision energy.

Women play key roles in the ATLAS Collaboration: from young physicists at the start of their careers to analysis group leaders and spokespersons of the collaboration. Celebrate International Women’s Day by meeting a few of these inspiring ATLAS researchers.

On 25 February 2016 in CERN's Main Auditorium, the ATLAS collaboration announced the winners of the 2015 ATLAS Thesis Awards: Javier Montejo Berlingen, Ruth Pöttgen, Nils Ruthmann, and Steven Schramm. The winners were selected by the ATLAS Thesis Awards Committee for their outstanding contributions to the collaboration in the context of a PhD thesis. A total of 33 nominations were received, all of a very high standard and encompassing major achievements in all areas of ATLAS results and activities.

Three young physicists – Ruth Jacobs, Artem Basalaev and Nedaa B I Asbah – have been named the recipients of the 2015 ATLAS PhD Grant.

As 2015 draws to a close, the ATLAS experiment wraps up its first phase of operation at a record-breaking energy frontier.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has awarded members of the ATLAS computing community first prize for their novel use of supercomputer infrastructure.

At the ATLAS experiment, masterful computing infrastructure is transforming raw data from the detector into particles for analysis, with a set direction, energy and type.

Heavy-ion physics is the study of the hot dense medium created shortly after the Big Bang. Physicists examine this medium in three collision systems: lead-lead, proton-lead and proton-proton collisions.

This week, physicists from around the world are gathering at the Top 2015 workshop in Ischia, Italy to discuss the latest measurements of the top quark. As the heaviest known fundamental particle, the top quark plays a special role in the search for "new physics".

Today, at the Large Hadron Collider Physics conference (LHCP2015), the ATLAS and CMS collaborations presented the most precise measurements yet of Higgs boson properties. By combining Run 1 data from both experiments, the new measurements paint a clear picture of how the Higgs boson is produced, decays, and interacts with other particles.