Administered by The Johns Hopkins University and funded by the National
Science Foundation, the $40,000 awards - being distributed for the first
time this year - will provide selected young theorists with funds to
underwrite the costs of their research, including travel and computing
needs.

Recipients of the 2007 LHC Theory Initiative Graduate Fellowship Awards
are Randall Kelly (University of California, San Diego) and Jonathan
Walsh (University of Washington). Their research interests include
calculations of higher- order corrections both within and beyond the
Standard Model, as well as the development of new, improved, simulation
tools to confront with data theoretical models.

In addition, LHC Theory Initiative Travel Awards, which provide $3,000
for LHC- related travel, were presented to Dai De Chang (Case Western
Reserve University), Wei Gong (University of Oregon), David Khron
(Princeton University) and Keith Rehermann (Johns Hopkins University).


All six winners are graduate students selected through a national
competition. The chair of the selection committee was Fred Olness from
Southern Methodist University.

*The goal of these fellowships and awards is to stimulate the work of
theoretical physicists who will help interpret the treasure trove of
data that will emerge from the Large Hadron Collider,* said Jonathan
Bagger, a member of the LHC Theory Initiative and chair of the
Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins. *Our initiative
will help the high- energy physics community take full advantage of the
LHC.*

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European laboratory for particle
physics in Geneva, Switzerland, is expected to begin operation late this
year. With its unprecedented energy and luminosity, the LHC promises to
revolutionize particle physics and our understanding of the universe. It
is expected to create new forms of matter as scientists search for the
elusive Higgs boson and a host of new particles, as well as help answer
some of the most fundamental questions of physics.

*How do particles acquire mass? Can dark matter be created in a
laboratory environment? Do new symmetries of nature link matter, energy,
space and time? How did matter behave a fraction of a second after the
Big Bang? Those are just some of the questions that we believe will be
answered through the LHC,* says LHC Theory Initiative member Lynne Orr
of the University of Rochester. *The ultimate goal of particle physics
is to identify the fundamental principles that govern matter, energy,
space and time. The LHC will allow us to explore this new terrain.*

Bagger and Orr are joined as principal investigators on the LHC Theory
Initiative by R. Sekhar Chivukula of Michigan State University and
Ulrich Baur of the State University of New York at Buffalo.

*In the coming years, we will not only continue to award the Graduate
Fellowship and Travel Awards, but will also award $150,000 grants to
postdoctoral fellows,* Baur said. *The money will allow these young
researchers to pursue their research and to build a network of
LHC- related theorists. We want to create a strong community of young
physicists.*

For more information on the LHC Theory Initiative see:
http://www.lhc- ti.org