A few weeks before the start of the long-awaited third data acquisition period (Run3) of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS, CMS and LHCb collaborations presented special awards to the young scientists who have distinguished themselves in the long and complex job of maintaining and upgrading ATLAS and CMS, which were already key players in 2012 in the discovery of the Higgs boson, and LHCb, which in Run3 will continue its search for clues to physics beyond the particle Standard Model. Among the award winners, there were many INFN researchers.

17 Outstanding Achievement Awards were given by the ATLAS collaboration, which honoured a group of young researchers from different countries and different institutions for their outstanding contributions in the job of completing and fine-tuning the new detectors that constitute the New Small Wheel (NSW), the major upgrade performed on the experiment. The list of winners also included Chiara Arcangeletti and Giada Mancini, from INFN Frascati National Laboratories, Luigi Longo, from the INFN Lecce division, and Emanuele Romano, from the INFN Pavia division. Equally crucial was the work of the INFN scientists in updating the CMS experiment, as demonstrated by the list of award winners. Winners of the awards were Andrea Bellora and Marta Tornago, from the INFN Turin division, Francesco Brivio, from the INFN Milan Bicocca division, Lisa Borgonovi, from the INFN Bologna division, and Andrea Gozzelino, from the INFN Legnaro National Laboratories. Finally, awards were given by the LHCb collaboration for the pioneering work of Saverio Mariani, from the INFN Florence division, and of Fabio Ferrari, from the INFN Bologna division and, among the best PhD theses, the work of Giulia Tucci, from the INFN Pisa division.