Sep 1 – 7, 2026
OAC conference center, Kolymbari, Crete, Greece.
Europe/Athens timezone
This is the sixth installment of a series of workshops where we bring together physicists from particle, astroparticle, and nuclear physics, computer science, and mathematics to develop new methods for experiment design and optimal information extraction from data, powered by differentiable programming.
 
This initiative stems from the activities of the MODE Collaboration. MODE stands for "Machine-learning Optimized Design of Experiments".
 

Location:

The workshop will take place at the OAC (https://www.oac.gr/en/) in Kolymbari, Crete (Greece). Information on the accommodation is available in a dedicated page.

At the same page you will find the procedure for young participants to ask for financial support: we have limited availability to cover part of the travel expenses and/or waiving of the conference fee for some selected young participants. To be considered for funding, you will need to submit an abstract for a talk or poster. The funding will be conditional on the delivery of the talk/poster presentation.

Remote attendance is not foreseen. We want to create the spirit of a scientific retreat, where serendipitous conversations lead to new ideas and collaborations.

Minimal schedule:

  • 1 September 2026: arrival day (evening, dinner included in the fee)
  • 2--6 September 2026: workshop sessions
  • 7 September 2026: departure day (morning, breakfast included in the fee)

Please account for different timezones when consulting the timetable. In particular, Greece is on Eastern European timezone (GMT+2).

Registration and abstract submission:

Please register using the links in the menu to the left.

New registrations close on 20 July 2026.

Registrations must go into “complete” status (i.e. wire transfers received, or confirmation that you will pay by cash at the venue) by 25 July.

 

Overview of the sessions:

  • Confirmed keynote speakers

    • TBA

    • TBA
  • Lectures and tutorials:

    • Tutorial (TBC)

  • Special events:

    • Poster session: prizes will be given to the best posters!
    • Hackathon (TBC): prizes will be given to the winners of the challenge!

  • Methods and Tools
  • Applications in Muon Tomography
  • Applications in particle physics
  • Applications in astro-HEP and neutrino physics
  • Applications in nuclear physics
  • Applications in medical physics and other fields

 

Prizes for special events

There will be a set of prizes for the hackathon, and one for the poster session.

Organising Committee:

You can get in touch with the organising commitee at mode-workshop-organizers@cern.ch.

  • Lorenzo Arsini (INFN-Roma and Sapienza Università di Roma)
  • Muhammad Awais (INFN-Padova and Luleå Tekniska Universitet)
  • Angel Bueno Rodriguez (DLR)
  • Tommaso Dorigo (INFN-Padova and Luleå Tekniska Universitet)
  • Luigi Favaro (UCLouvain)
  • Andrea Giammanco (UCLouvain)
  • Christian Glaser (TU Dortmund University)
  • Hamza Hanif (Simon Fraser University)
  • Lisa Kusch (TU Eindhoven)
  • Tobias Kortus (RPTU)
  • Gilles Louppe (ULiège)
  • Pablo Martinez Ruiz del Árbol (Universidad de Cantabria)
  • Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo)
  • Gordon Watts (University of Washington)
  • Stéphanie Landrain (secretariat) (UCLouvain)

 

Scientific Advisory Committee:

  • Atilim Gunes Baydin (University of Oxford)
  • Kyle Cranmer (University of Wisconsin)
  • Julien Donini (Université Clermont Auvergne)
  • Piero Giubilato (Università di Padova)
  • Gian Michele Innocenti (CERN)
  • Michael Kagan (SLAC)
  • Riccardo Rando (Università di Padova)
  • Roberto Ruiz de Austri Bazan (IFIC-CSIC/UV)
  • Kazuhiro Terao (SLAC)
  • Andrey Ustyuzhanin (SIT, HSE Univ., NUS)
  • Christoph Weniger (University of Amsterdam)

 

Funding agencies:

This workshop is partially supported by the joint ECFA-NuPECC-APPEC Activities (JENAA).

This workshop is partially supported by National Science Foundation grant PHY-2323298 (IRIS-HEP).

This workshop is partially supported by the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.–FNRS)

 

Conference information

Date/Time

Starts

Ends

All times are in Europe/Athens

Location

OAC conference center, Kolymbari, Crete, Greece.
The call for abstracts is open
You can submit an abstract for reviewing.
Application
Application for this event is currently open.