A congressional hearing this month calling for greater government transparency on UFOs is one of the latest events spurring public interest in aliens.

But beyond many people’s fascination with the nuts and bolts of unidentified objects flying at physics-defying speeds and trajectories lies a yearning for enlightenment and transcendence, says Northeastern psychology professor David DeSteno.

It’s enough to spawn new spiritual movements that could replace or become  incorporated into more traditional religions in some instances, he says.

Read more from Northeastern Global News

Getty Images

On June 3-7 2024, the Physics department and the College of Science hosted the 2024 edition of the Large Hadron Collider Physics conference (LHCP) on our Boston campus. This is one of the major international conferences in particle physics at colliders (the Large Hadron Collider and beyond). This conference is held annually on alternating continents, with 2024 being the designated year of the Americas. Prof. Emanuela Barberis, a member of the physics department experimental particle physics (EPP) faculty, successfully bid to host the 2024 edition, LHCP2024, on the Northeastern University Boston campus.

The LHCP2024 program contained a detailed review of the latest experimental and theoretical results on collider physics, with many final results from the past run of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, a first glimpse of the upgraded accelerator and detector operation in current run, and discussions on further research directions within the high energy particle physics community, both in theory and experiment. The main goal of the conference was to provide intense and lively discussions between experimenters and theorists in such research areas as the Standard Model Physics and Beyond, the Higgs Boson, Heavy Quark Physics and Heavy Ion Physics as well as to share recent progress in the high luminosity upgrades of the LHC and future collider developments. At Northeastern University, Prof. Barberis conducts research with her EPP faculty colleagues (Profs. Johan Sebastian Bonilla Castro, Toyoko Orimoto, Louise Skinnari, and Darien Wood) on one of the detectors at the CERN LHC in Switzerland, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector.

Prof. Emanuela Barberis and Dean Hazel Sive open the LHCP2024 conference.

Co-chaired by Prof. Emanuela Barberis and Prof. Toyoko Orimoto, the conference was opened with a welcome address from Dean Hazel Sive. All EPP faculty, as well as several experimental and theoretical faculty experts from the greater Boston area were actively involved in the local organization. The LHCP2024 conference attracted approximately 450 registrants from more than 20 countries, with a plenary series of 40 talks, more than 200 parallel talks, and a contributed poster session with approximately 100 posters from graduate and undergraduate students from around the world. A total of 10 of the presentations at the poster sessions were made by graduate students from the Northeastern University CMS group, whom the experimental particle physics faculty advise, and by undergraduate students that the faculty support – from NSF and DOE research grants – to work at CERN as Northeastern University co-op students. The Northeastern CMS group has engaged approximately 40 undergraduate students in Co-op research at CERN, since 2004, and continues to do so at the increased rate of approximately 5 per year in recent years.

LHC2024 Poster session held in the atrium of the Northeastern University Interdisciplinary Science Center (ISEC).

In addition to the many scientific sessions, the conference included a panel on the future of high energy particle physics, and public events on outreach and science communication, with science writers in attendance, including New York Times science writer Katrina Miller. The conference provided an invaluable learning and networking opportunity for students interested in the field of particle physics at Northeastern University and around the world, and it showcased the prominent role in global research of Northeastern University physics faculty and students.

Northeastern University faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and staff members involved in the local organization of the LHCP2024 conference are recognized on the stage of Blackman Auditorium during the closing talk of the conference.

Northeastern University professor Maria Ivanova is heading to South Korea with hopes of seeing an international treaty that aims to put the brakes on plastic pollution across the globe.

Ivanova, director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern, is leading a delegation that will take part in the fifth round of negotiations on an international treaty on plastic pollution authorized by the United Nations in March 2022.

The delegation includes Aaron Stubbins, a Northeastern professor of marine and environmental sciences and chemistry and chemical biology, and six graduate students from the university.

Read more from Northeastern Global News

Courtesy of John Werner Photography

Her co-op with a German data analytics and machine-learning artificial intelligence company did not require her to reside in Cologne. But Northeastern University student Ava Knight didn’t let that stop her from learning and working in Europe.

“Since they were saying you’re not really going to need to come into the office, you can just live anywhere in a European time zone — I found a language program in Barcelona, Spain,” says Knight, a fourth-year student at Northeastern with a combined major in data science and biology.

Read more from Northeastern Global News

Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University