The Higgs Puzzle

Despite the great success of the standard model of electroweak and strong interactions to describe the phenomena obseved in high energy physics experiments, the mechanism by which the elementary particles are endowed with their masses is yet to be unravelled. Does nature choose the Higgs mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking as predicted by the standard model, or do we need some alternative explanation? The purpose of the workshop is to capture new trends and ideas in this exciting area of fundamental physics, and to explore the potential of recent (LEPI), present (HERA, LEPII, SLC, Tevatron) and future (FMC, LHC, NLC) colliding-beam experiments to shed light on the Higgs puzzle.