With a length of over 40 metres and a height of around 25 metres, ATLAS is one of the largest and most complex scientific instruments ever built. The particle detector is used in the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN in Switzerland. Scientists around the world conduct research with and on the detector - in search of previously unknown physical phenomena.

Once a year, all German institutes involved in ATLAS meet to discuss the current state of knowledge and plan the next steps. This time in Wuppertal at the invitation of Prof Dr Wolfgang Wagner from the Experimental Elementary Particle Physics working group at the University of Wuppertal, who is currently the spokesperson for the German ATLAS network, ATLAS-D. This invitation was also accepted by representatives of the ATLAS management and the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, which is funding the ATLAS experiment, as all the research surrounding the detector is known.

The central points are the improvement of the ATLAS detector for the next, higher expansion stage of the LHC from 2030, the analysis of the physical data collected and the high-performance computing with them. In the new performance phase of the LHC, the collision rate of the particles should be increased tenfold, for which ATLAS must also be further developed. The Wuppertal team, consisting of 30 physicists, students and engineers, is playing a key role in the preparations.