An-Najah Renews ATLAS Membership at CERN for the Fourth Year, Advancing Its Global Research Standing
An-Najah National University has renewed its membership, for the fourth consecutive year, in the ATLAS Experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), reaffirming its position as the only Palestinian university to achieve this distinction.
This accomplishment reflects sustained research efforts led by Dr. Ahmed Bassalat, Associate Professor in Physics at An-Najah National University, in collaboration with a distinguished group of students from An-Najah University engaged in ATLAS and CERN projects. This collaboration has contributed significantly to advancing the understanding of fundamental particles that constitute matter. Notably, the team has participated in the historic discovery of the Higgs boson—recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics—as well as in receiving the 2025 Breakthrough Prize.
Through this collaboration, the University has been positioned among leading global institutions, alongside prestigious universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Paris-Saclay, Harvard University, University of Oxford, and Sorbonne University. This further strengthens An-Najah’s role as a Palestinian gateway to international scientific research and innovation.
As part of this partnership, the University annually organizes the Winter School in High Energy Physics in Palestine (WISHEPP), under the supervision of Dr. Kherieh Rassas, Vice President for Global Partnerships and Initiatives and President of UNIMED. The program is implemented in collaboration with CERN (Switzerland), the University of Paris-Saclay and IJCLab laboratories (France) with continued support from the Consulate General of France in Jerusalem. WISHEPP has served as a milestone of this collaboration, providing hundreds of opportunities and dozens of scholarships for An-Najah students to pursue doctoral studies at leading international universities.
Prof. Abdel Naser Zaid, President of An-Najah National University, emphasized that renewing this membership represents international recognition of the University’s academic excellence and further reinforces its position as a leading regional institution and a center of excellence in high energy physics in Palestine and the Arab world.
It is worth noting that the ATLAS Collaboration includes more than 3,000 scientists and researchers, in addition to approximately 1,200 PhD students from over 40 countries. Together, they work to uncover the mysteries of the universe, explore dark the matter, and understand the fundamental forces governing the cosmos through the study of the smallest known particles.
