Zareen Tahsin Anjum, a postgraduate student in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Dhaka, has earned rare international distinction by securing a place in the highly competitive CERN Summer Student Program 2025 – an achievement that has drawn wide acclaim across the university and the scientific community.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s largest and most advanced centre for particle physics research, located in Geneva, Switzerland.

Each year, more than ten thousand students worldwide apply for its prestigious summer program; only around three hundred are selected following a rigorous evaluation of academic performance, research capabilities, and potential for contributing to frontier scientific investigations.

In this intensely competitive environment, Zareen’s selection stands out as a remarkable accomplishment for Bangladesh.

As part of the program, she has been assigned to work with CERN’s renowned ATLAS experiment, one of the two primary detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, stretching 27 kilometres beneath the Switzerland–France border.

ATLAS played a central role in the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, a milestone breakthrough popularly known as the identification of the “God Particle.”

Zareen is currently contributing to the Tau Trigger Project, linked to research on di-Higgs boson production.

Understanding how the Higgs boson interacts with itself is a key part of unlocking deeper questions about the fundamental structure of matter, the forces that govern the universe, and potential physics beyond the Standard Model.

Her involvement places her at the forefront of global scientific inquiry.

Her achievement also carries a symbolic resonance.

The term “boson” in Higgs Boson is derived from the name of eminent Bengali physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, whose groundbreaking work established the Bose–Einstein statistics and defined an entire class of particles.

Bose himself taught at the University of Dhaka, making Zareen’s journey to CERN a continuation of a historic scientific lineage.

Zareen’s academic record has been consistently distinguished.

She graduated with first-class first position and the highest CGPA in her undergraduate cohort at Dhaka University, and recently received the university’s Dean’s Award 2025.

Beyond academics, she is active in science communication, contributing articles to various platforms to help popularize scientific knowledge among young learners.

For many aspiring students in Bangladesh, her story underscores that opportunities at the highest levels of global science are attainable.

Her success highlights not only personal determination and talent but also the growing strength and ambition of Dhaka University’s Nuclear Engineering Department, which continues to expand research opportunities and international collaboration.