MUON TOMOGRAPHY LAB @ OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE

Our Lab's Work

Our lab is collaborating with KoBold Metals to develop the next generation of sub-surface imaging technology for rare Earth mineral exploration. We design particle detectors that will enable the construction of high-resolution 3D maps of mineral deposits, significantly reducing the drilling requirements, time, and cost of mineral exploration. We do all design, fabrication, and deployment of these detector systems in-house.

Our detectors are built with a material called a scintillator, which is a class of material which emits light when struck by a charged particle, like a muon. This light is then collected and converted into an electrical signal for analysis.

Company Updates:

• Our MIDAS project was awarded $3.5 million in funding by the Department of Energy through the ARPA-E ROCKS Program. (2026)
• The MIDAS project welcomes a new partnership with a group at Stanford University to incorporate seismic imaging technology. (2026)
• Our hodoscope detector is set for deployment in a Turkish mine. (July 2026)
• Our progress was presented at the Muographers 2026 conference in Budapest, Hungary. (June 2026)

Our Technology: Muon Tomography

Everyday, subatomic particles are colliding with the Earth's atmosphere. When these collisions occur, they produce cosmic air showers, massive particle showers which rain down onto Earth. Within these showers are particles called muons which penetrate deep into the Earth's crust.

Around the middle of the 20th century, physicists realized that this flux of muons could be used for imaging technology as a way to "X-ray" the Earth, and muon tomography — or muography — was born. Over the years, this technology has been used to scan a variety of structures that would be difficult to non-invasively construct an image of otherwise, ranging from underground caves to the Great Pyramid of Giza. Today, it can be used to probe underground in search of rare Earth mineral deposits.

Muon tomography is the practice of detecting the "shadow" of cosmic air showers to construct an image of the object casting that shadow. High density objects attenuate muons more than the surrounding ground, causing a lower flux of muons to pass through mineral deposits. This results in these mineral deposits casting a shadow which our detectors are able to see. Analysis is performed on this data––utilizing multiphysics models and machine learning––to ultimately construct a 3D density map of the ore-body. This 3D image has a spatial resolution on the order of a millimeter.

My Roles

I have contributed to all aspects of the design, fabrication, and deployment of all three of our detector systems. My work spans from computational physics simulation, statistical analysis and signal processing, and the development of software, hardware, and electronics.

Design and Simulation

Much of my work focuses on simplifying the detector design to reduce cost and assembly time, while maintaining detection efficiency standards, enabling mass production of modules. Our design philosophy begins from the fundamental physics and works its way up to a simple detector that fits into a cohesive imaging system as a modular unit. At all points in the design process, we balance simplicity with performance.

The design process begins with numerical simulations. These simulations are done to understand all aspects of the detector performance and inform design decisions. Many of our simple simulations are run with Python and R. More extensive simulations are built with GEANT4, a C++ based package developed by CERN for the purpose of simulating particle interactions with matter. Our GEANT4 models allow us to simulate the scintillation photon transport within the detectors, enabling us to optimize the detector geometry for cost and performance.

Fabrication: Hardware, Software, and Electronics

I have contributed extensively to the assembly of all detector systems from hardware and software to electronics. This includes the construction of large aluminium enclosures; the design, CAD, and 3D-printing of physical mounts for the electronics systems; and the soldering, testing, and debugging of electronic components of the data acquisition system (DAQ), including transmitter, receiver, and constant fraction discriminator (CFD) PCB circuit boards which transmit and digitize the raw signal from the detectors.

I have also contributed to embedded software for IoT-enabled detector communication networks which enable a GPS-based timing DAQ and remote firmware updates to microprocessors. I implemented a procedure for over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates to microprocessors via Wifi, enabling us to send and install remote updates to the microprocessors of the entire detector array, without interrupting the detection process which operates with a timing resolution at the nanosecond scale.

Testing and Calibration

After assembly was completed, I performed quality assurance for all detector systems, analyzing the output signal and calibrating it against a controlled radiation source. This involved running various controlled experiments to ensure we saw the expected behaviors under different circumstances. In these experiments, we would either modify the detector configuration parameters or modify the detector's environment (that is, the objects it was detecting) and ensure that the output signal was consistent with what particle physics and geophysics theory would predict.

Deployment

Alongside one of my teammates, I will be deploying one of our hodoscope detectors in a Turkish mine in July of 2026. This will be this detector design's first field deployment.