Sapienza is participating in the International Masterclass on Particle Physics, which will be held from February 11 to March 27. Together with their peers from all over the world, Italian students will discover how particle physics works by immersing themselves in CERN's research and meeting the people who work there. The first day of the Masterclass is also the International Day of Women and Girls in Science and will include all-female events to promote gender equality in research and involve female students in experiments and particle physics.

This year's Masterclasses will take place mainly in digital form. Students will go online or come to the university. Researchers will accompany them on a journey of discovery into particles' properties, exploring the secrets of CERN's LHC (Large Hadron Collider), the 27 km long tunnel 100 metres below the countryside outside Geneva where particles collide at almost the speed of light.

Each location will organise one or more days of lectures and seminars on the fundamental topics of particle physics, followed by computer-based exercises in which students can analyse data from experiments at the LHC particle accelerator (ATLAS, CMS, ALICE or LHCb). They will use real data from the LHC to simulate the epoch-making discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, as well as the discovery of the W and Z bosons (the very ones that won Carlo Rubbia the Nobel Prize in 1984), and to learn about other particles and explore their unique characteristics and properties. In addition to data from CERN experiments, some of this year's Masterclasses will be dedicated to the BELLEII experiment at the KEK laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan.

At the end of each day, just like in real international research collaboration, there will be a videocall between the young Masterclass participants from all over the world to discuss the exercises' results together.

Sapienza University will participate in the event with activities organised by the Department of Physics and the Rome section of INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics), on February 11 and 22. In particular, on Thursday, February 11, the Masterclass on particles will be preceded by three seminars held by female scholars. On the same date, the Universities of Cagliari and Cosenza will also offer activities dedicated to the day's theme.

The International Particle Masterclasses, now in their 17th year, are organised by IPPOG (International Particle Physics Outreach Group) and, in Italy, by INFN. The Masterclasses take place simultaneously in 60 different countries, involve over 200 of the world's most prestigious research bodies and universities and more than 13,000 secondary school students. For the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, this year the sections of Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Cosenza, Ferrara, Florence, Genoa, Lecce, Milano Bicocca, Milan, Naples, Padua, Parma, Pavia, Perugia, Pisa, Salerno, Sapienza University of Rome, Roma Tor Vergata, Roma Tre, Turin, Trento, Trieste and Udine, and the National Laboratories of Frascati will be present.