The Spallateam”, a team from the Collège Cardinal Mercier in Belgium, and the team “Physical”, from Cağaloğlu Anadolu Lisesi in Türkiye, will travel to CERN in September 2025 to perform their proposed experiments. The teams “Dawson Technicolor” from Dawson College in Canada and “Pumas in Kollision” from Escuela Nacional Preparatoria N° 6 "Antonio Caso" in Mexico will carry out their experiment at a DESY beamline, while “Team XTReme” from Centennial High School in the USA will be welcomed at the University of Bonn. It is the first time that teams from Belgium and Türkiye have won the competition.
A beamline is a facility that provides high-energy fluxes of subatomic particles that can be used to conduct experiments in different fields, including fundamental physics, material science and medicine.
The participation rate has been rising consistently since the launch of Beamline for Schools in 2014, with a record number of 508 teams from 72 countries submitting an experiment proposal in 2025. More than 3500 high-school students participated this year.
“Year after year, we keep being amazed by the quality of the students’ proposals,” says Charlotte Warakaulle, CERN Director for International Relations. “Education is at the core of our mission, and the consistent growth in the number of students taking part in the competition demonstrates the strong interest of students in science, technology, engineering and maths. We want to nurture this interest and talent, and we are looking forward to welcoming the winners on site!”
The fruitful collaboration between CERN and DESY started in 2019 during a long shutdown period of the CERN accelerators. This is the sixth year that the German laboratory has hosted competition winners.
Beate Heinemann, chair of DESY’s Board of Directors, adds: “My heartfelt congratulations not only to this year’s winners but also to all the other participants. You got together and worked as teams for your proposals – such teamwork is the first step towards great science! I look forward to welcoming the Canadian and Mexican teams at DESY and hope they will find answers to their scientific questions using the DESY beamlines.”
For the first time this year, the University of Bonn will also be welcoming a team, who will use its electron accelerator ELSA.
“At the University of Bonn we are proud to contribute the ELSA beam for the first time and very much look forward to hosting a winning team. I am very impressed by the proposal of Team XTReme and we will do our best to provide them with a good experimental environment. We know that the BL4S participants of today are the scientists of tomorrow,” says Professor Klaus Desch, who is in charge of the ELSA accelerator facility.
“Our team proposes to compare the numbers of neutrons emitted by two different spallation targets. The first, a homogeneous target, would be made of a heavy metal: tungsten. The second target would be composite: tungsten combined with elements of aluminium (a light metal). We are hoping for an increase in neutrons in the second case,” says “the Spallateam”, from Belgium. “We cannot wait to conduct our experiment at CERN!”
“Our experiment focuses on optimising nuclear spallation by investigating how different target materials and their thicknesses affect neutron yield. This research could inform future methods for radioactive waste reduction and sustainable neutron source design. Being selected to conduct our experiment at CERN feels surreal; it was beyond our dreams. Getting to be at the heart of scientific discovery, not as observers but as contributors, is the most meaningful moment of our lives so far,” says Defne Karaoğluol from the Turkish “Physical” team.
“Our experiment aims to observe the trajectories of muons with a three-dimensional scintillator-based detector, the Scintillating Chamber,” says Danah Dézémé from the Canadian “Dawson Technicolor” team. “The opportunity that has been presented to us fills us with so much excitement and anticipation for the future of the Scintillating Chamber as well as for the future of particle physics as a whole!”
“Our project explores the use of kidneywood pigment and fluorite as scintillating media, combining scientific inquiry with cultural heritage,” explains “Pumas in Kollision”, the team from Mexico. “We aim to demonstrate that it is possible to propose new alternatives to standard procedures, thereby making them more accessible and adaptable for laboratories with limited infrastructure. Winning meant to all of us that the effort we invested was completely worth it, and we're very excited to be able to work with world-class scientists.”
“Our project investigates the production of transition radiation as high-energy electrons pass through multilayer dielectric interfaces,” says “Team XTReme”, from the USA. “It's almost surreal to think that we've made it to the point where we get to push the boundaries of particle physics through hands-on experimentation at ELSA. We're grateful to the whole BL4S organisation for making this happen, and we're so excited for this opportunity!”
The winning proposals were selected by a committee of CERN, DESY and ELSA scientists from a shortlist of 50 particularly promising experiments. In addition, three teams will be recognised for the most creative video proposals and another 15 teams for the quality of their physics outreach activities in their local communities, taking advantage of the knowledge they have gained by participating in BL4S.