AI agents at CERN: Building LLM tools for a Big Science collaboration

Description: The ATLAS Experiment on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is one of the World's biggest science experiments and among the most complex machines ever built. With more than a thousand scientific publications and 100s of PhD theses published annually, the research output of this behemoth of fundamental physics is too vast for any one person to grasp. LLMs are the first practical tool to automate tasks requiring semantic understanding. In addition to enabling new ways of automating repetitive research tasks, they allow ATLAS physicists to, for the first time, synthesize new insights from the whole body of research of their collaboration. Thus, paving the way for new ways of analysing data from particle physics experiments and supercharging collaboration between physicists.
Bio: Alex Sopio, PhD - Alex has been a postdoctoral researcher in experimental particle physics at the University of Edinburgh since 2024 and joined GAIL as a Junior Fellow in 2026. He works on novel measurements of the Higgs Boson with the ATLAS Experiment on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He completed his PhD in particle physics at University College London in 2023 with the UKRI CDT in Data Intensive Science. From hadronic jets and Higgs bosons to image-recognition and natural-language processing: Alex has spent his research career exploring how state-of-the art machine learning and AI tools can accelerate discoveries at particle colliders.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher University of Edinburgh's Generative AI Laboratory