Posted Feb 16, 2021 2:56 pm Iowa State high-energy physicists have joined the Belle II experiment based in Tsukuba, Japan, where they'll search for new physics. Larger photo. Photo by KEK (Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization)/Shota Takahashi. AMES, Iowa – Three Iowa State University physicists have spent the past decade helping to upgrade hardware and untangle messy proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. One result of their work is that the three have their names – Chunhui Chen, Jim Cochran and Soeren Prell – on the 2012 research paper describing how the collider’s ATLAS detector observed a new particle later confirmed to be the long-sought Higgs boson. The Higgs is the source of mass in subatomic particles. It’s one of the things that makes the universe as we know it possible.