Welcome
Mineral detectors record and retain damage induced by nuclear recoils in synthetic or natural mineral samples. The damage features can then be read out by a variety of nano- and micro-scale imaging techniques. Applications of mineral detectors on timescales relevant for laboratory experiments include reactor neutrino monitoring and dark matter detection, with the potential to measure the directions as well as the energies of the induced nuclear recoils. For natural mineral detectors which record nuclear recoils over geological timescales, reading out even small mineral samples could be sensitive to rare interactions induced by astrophysical neutrinos, cosmic rays, dark matter and heavy exotic particles. A series of mineral detectors of different ages could measure the time evolution of these fluxes, offering a unique window into the history of our solar system and the Milky Way. Mineral detector research is highly multidisciplinary, incorporating aspects of high energy physics, condensed matter physics, materials science, geoscience, and AI/ML for data analysis. At this workshop, we will discuss the vast physics potential of mineral detectors, the progress in experimental studies, and how the various groups within the mineral detection community are working towards realizing the promise of mineral detection.
MDvDM'26 14.04.2026, 09:00 - 17.04.2026, 18:00 (no fees) - REGISTRATION IS OPEN!
Preliminary List of Speakers
| Anupam Ray | Queen's U. | Lorenzo Caccianiga | INFN Milan |
| Ayuki Kamada | Warsaw U. | Nikita Vladimirov | U. of Zurich |
| Belina von Krosigk | Heidelberg U. | Noriko Hasebe | Kanazawa U. |
| Chris Kelso | U. of North Florida | Patrick Huber | Virginia Tech |
| Claudio Galelli | INFN Milan | Patrick Stengel | Jožef Stefan Institute |
| Daniel Ang | U. of Maryland | Pieter Vermeesch | UC London |
| Dionysius Theodosopoulos | U. of Texas at Austin | Ranny Budnik | Weizmann Institute |
| Emilie LaVoie-Ingram | U. of Michigan | Samuel Hedges | Virginia Tech |
| Hannah Ross | U. of Michigan | Samuel Wong | U. of Washington |
| Holger Kluck | ÖAW | Shigenobu Hirose | JAMSTEC |
| Igor Jovanovic | UC Berkeley | Tatsuhiro Naka | Toho U. |
|
Jin-Wei Wang |
UESTC | Vincent Breton | IN2P3 |
| Kai Sun | U. of Michigan | Xiuyuan Zhang | MIT |
| Kohta Murase | Penn State U. |