The Auckland Uni nuclear physicist unlocking secrets of the universe
Photo:
Sharon Brettkelly
When Professor David Krofcheck got an email congratulating him on winning the Oscar of the science world, he dismissed it as a hoax.
"I thought it was a scam, I thought it was a phishing email," recalls Krofcheck, nuclear physicist at the University of Auckland.
"Yeah right, I've won the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics."
Then he started to believe that it was "bizarre enough to be real".
The prize for Krofcheck and his 13,507 colleagues, who have worked to unravel the mysteries of the universe, was presented at an Academy Awards-style ceremony in LA, attended by a who's who of Hollywood and science-dom.
It recognises their years of work on the world's greatest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, near Geneva.
Known as the largest smasher of atoms, the collider reveals information about the fundamental properties of matter, energy and the early universe.
Krofcheck played a key role in the breakthrough discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 through his work on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector, a giant camera that records particle collisions. The CMS detector is one of four research collaborations that the 13,508 Breakthrough Prize-winning scientists worked on.
"It must be like building the pyramid," he jokes. "Pharoah never thanked the slaves for building the pyramid, but this is like the group award for everyone who was able to contribute building the detector, getting it to work right, taking data, analysing the data, publishing the data and finding new and wonderful things, at least for physics."
Krofcheck's office, overlooking Auckland's skyscrapers, is a long way from CERN and his fellow scientists who are scattered around the world. In his office his shelves are stacked with books that tell the story of his lifelong curiosity about the beginnings of the universe after the Big Bang.
He has several Christmas cards from CERN pinned to his wall, and on his desk a small stack of books that he calls his talking point for visitors - the one on top is
Alan Turing: The Enigma
, the book that inspired the Benedict Cumberbatch film
The Imitation Game
.
"These books are like conversation starters, things that are important for our field and things that interest me about the origin of the universe, the origin of the technology we use to study nuclear and particle physics."
Sitting on a shelf are mugs from the many laboratories and universities he has attended. One of three rocks on the windowsill is a geode, a gift from his daughter. He has one half and she has the other.
"They fit perfectly together. That's kind of a reminder, when I'm feeling frustrated or sad, I pick up my daughter's geode and know that she has the other half."
As the only scientist in his field in New Zealand, Krofcheck is often called on to talk to the media about Fukushima's nuclear meltdown, North Korea's nuclear weapons and the Russians capturing nuclear power plants in Ukraine, so he is delighted to speak to
The Detail
about "something pleasant".
When he's at CERN he sits in a control room several kilometres from the Large Hadron Collider.
"We see signals coming from individual detectors. I look on my computer screen and I can see how big the electrical signals are, how fast the electrical signals are coming from these particles.
"We keep watching them to make sure the rate doesn't get too high, so we're collecting so much data that we can't write it fast enough. Or suddenly the signal disappears, which is a disaster, which means somehow the beam has gone off target."
Krofcheck was involved in solving that problem, alongside Professor Phil Butler of the University of Canterbury and his son Professor Anthony Butler of the University of Otago, by ensuring the safe functioning of the US $550 million CMS detector.
By preventing the beam from going off target, data could be safely recorded and that in turn led to the Higgs boson discovery.
His work with the Butlers led to
the radiology company MARS Bioimaging
, which has received millions of dollars in government funding for development.
Krofcheck says that is the everyday application of the years of research at the Hadron Collider.
But for him it is pure curiosity.
"There's never an end. That's the beauty," he says. "I love seeing the advancing story of more and more things fitting together so you can make predictions as to why stars might behave, for example, or black holes might behave.
"We need this knowledge generated from accelerators on earth but it gives us a grasp of the bigger picture of what's happening in the universe."
Check out how to listen to and follow
The Detail
here
.
You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on
or following us on
.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter
curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

RNZ News
2 days ago
- RNZ News
The University Of Auckland steps into Space
Last month the University Of Auckland launched it's own satellite TPA1. About the size of a loaf of bread it's now whizzing around the globe 500Km up - 15 times a day. The satellite will be available for staff and students to use in their projects. Dr Ben Taylor is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Auckland's Space Institute Photo: University Of Auckland


NZ Herald
15-07-2025
- NZ Herald
What latest research says about Auckland's volcanic field and how to prepare for an eruption
Research into Ubehebe Craters in California's Death Valley, a volcanic zone similar to the one found beneath Auckland, has found evidence of base surges 10-15km from volcanic vents. But, how likely is a volcanic eruption in Auckland, in our lifetime? University of Auckland professor Jan Lindsay told The Front Page the threat is not immediate. 'To put things into perspective, we've had about 53 eruptions and volcanoes from over a 200,000-year period,' she said. At least 42 of Auckland's 53 volcanoes show evidence of phreatomagmatic eruptions, which are known to involve base surges. 'A base surge is a fast-moving flow of gases and volcanic ash, which is little tiny rock fragments travelling along the ground basically. If you have ever seen images of the twin towers collapsing or a nuclear explosion, there's often a big ash cloud or smoke that billows upwards. But, there's also a cloud that travels along the ground at the bottom, and that's a base surge,' Lindsay said. While scientists consider the probability of an eruption from the Auckland volcanic field occurring within our lifetimes to be low, the field is active. It's not anything to lose sleep over, Lindsay said, but it's always good to be educated and well-prepared. 'Just perhaps know where to go for reputable information, so Auckland Emergency Management and places like that,' she said. Listen to the full episode to hear more about research into volcanic activity. The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016. You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.


Otago Daily Times
13-07-2025
- Otago Daily Times
New technique helping save at-risk Hector's, Maui dolphins
Solving a three-billion-piece jigsaw puzzle has given conservationists a fighting chance of saving New Zealand's endangered Hector's and Māui dolphins. University of Otago anatomy researcher Dr Alana Alexander and Otago PhD candidate Sebastian Alvarez-Costes have found a way to create their genomes from degraded DNA samples, which is a hugely important step in managing the threatened species. Dr Alexander said getting small tissue samples from free-swimming and elusive underwater aquatic mammals was "tricky", meaning pulling together a quality genome using their DNA had been challenging up until now. "We're really lucky that in New Zealand, when whales and dolphins get stranded, the Department of Conservation takes a small tissue sample with the permission of iwi, and they send it to the New Zealand Cetacean Tissue Archive, at the University of Auckland. "One of our Maui dolphin samples came from that archive, and our Hector's dolphin sample came from an animal that was sampled while free-swimming at Cloudy Bay, on the South Island. "The way that these samples were stored was really great for genetics back in the day, but now we've got all these fancy genome techniques that have come on board, and they need really high-quality tissue. "They needed to be snap frozen at the point of collection." Unfortunately, these samples were not stored in optimal conditions, leading to DNA degradation, she said. Rather than abandon the valuable, but imperfect samples, Dr Alexander, Mr Alvarez-Costes and colleagues from Otago, the University of Auckland, Massey University, Oregon State University and the University of Munich looked at how they could work with what they had. The researchers used high-quality genomes from closely related whales and dolphins — particularly the bottlenose dolphin and vaquita — to create a reference framework to properly assemble and organise the fragmented DNA pieces from Hector's and Māui dolphins. The result was the development of an innovative genome assembly process (a pipeline) that leveraged ''synteny'' — similarities in the order of genes between related species and the structure of their chromosome, Dr Alexander said. ''The analogy I would use is that doing a genome is like doing a puzzle with three billion pieces and you don't know where any of them go. ''What using these other whales and dolphins did was kind of give us the picture on the front of the jigsaw puzzle box, so that we had a good idea about where those different bits of DNA should be placed, so that we could stitch together genomes for these species.'' The technique is a first and has had proved remarkably successful. More than 99% of the genome has been successfully mapped to chromosomes, despite the team working with degraded DNA samples. Their small size and inshore distribution makes these dolphins very vulnerable to fisheries bycatch, pollution, marine traffic and disease. As a result, the Hector's dolphin is endangered with about 15,000 distributed around the South Island, and the Māui dolphin is critically endangered with only 48 individuals older than 1-year-old. Mr Alvarez-Costes said there were concerns for Māui dolphins because the study indicated the species might now be at risk of inbreeding. ''What's also particularly concerning is their reduced genetic diversity may hamper their ability to adapt to other emerging threats like climate change,'' he said. Despite the great challenges, the new genomic information would give conservationists a deeper understanding of each population's genetic health and evolutionary history. That in turn would allow them to contribute to better-informed decisions about protection measures. Dr Alexander said it had been ''a long journey'' and the team was excited to see the project completed. Scientists around the world were now looking to see if the same technique could be used on other species, she said.