Thursday, February 12, 2026
4:00 pm-5:00 pm
From Beams to Bedside: IsoDAR, Neutrinos, and the Power of Application-Driven Physics
In this talk, we’ll take a research journey from neutrino physics to cancer treatment and see how working across disciplines helps open doors you didn’t know you were inventing a key for. I will highlight the IsoDAR experiment, which was conceived to definitively address a series of long-standing anomalies observed in neutrino oscillation experiments. IsoDAR can achieve this by virtue of a novel class of compact cyclotrons developed to enable unprecedented beam currents. When paired with an appropriate target and a large scintillation detector deep underground, a full oscillation curve can be obtained, with an estimated 1.7 million interactions observed.
Beyond particle physics, the effort to design these cyclotrons has driven several innovations in accelerator and target technology that will open doors in other fields, ranging from fusion research and nuclear waste management to cancer therapy and beyond. In fact, when such systems are conceived with interdisciplinary applications in mind from the outset—rather than as post-hoc adaptations—new and powerful directions emerge.
A particularly promising application is the adaptation of IsoDAR’s high-current cyclotrons for medical isotope production. As a concrete example of my latest work, I will introduce you to a low-energy, cost-effective IsoDAR-class cyclotron which can be modified to generate molybdenum-99, a critical isotope that is currently produced almost exclusively at large reactor facilities.
