The ATLAS detector is being built to study proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy of 14 TeV. It will provide an excellent chance of discovering the source of electroweak symmetry breaking (the Higgs boson) and possibly new forms of matter such as supersymmetric states. The lightest supersymmetric state is a prime candidate for the dark matter in the universe.

This detector will be used at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which will be the world's highest energy particle collider when it begins operation in 2008.

Chicago is working in the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter system and is preparing the fast readout electronics, together with Stockholm University. The group is also involved in development of ATLAS software and in grid computing. Chicago is the site of a U.S. ATLAS Tier 2 computing center.