Rajaâ Cherkaoui El Moursli is a Moroccan Professor of nuclear physics. She obtained her first degree in mathematics at Lycée Descartes in Rabat. She then went to study in Grenoble in France where she obtained her doctorate in physics at the Laboratoire de Physique subatomique et cosmologie which was part of the Joseph Fourier University. In 1982 she returned to Rabat, where she currently leads a research team for ATLAS, one of two general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Her work has focused on the simulation and construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter in ATLAS. In 2015 she was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science for Africa and the Arab states. The award cited her contribution to the proof of the existence of the Higgs Boson. This particle is responsible for the creation of mass. The citation also mentioned El Moursli’s work in setting up a master's degree program in medical physics.