Using Neutrinos to Detect Clandestine Nuclear Activity

Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, Scientist in Residence, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey

Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress is a nuclear physicist specializing in neutrinos. He was part of the Sudbury Neutrino Laboratory team that was cited in the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics and in the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Physics. He recently joined the AIT-Watchman project, a US-UK collaboration to deploy a neutrino detector in the UK’s deepest mine for remote monitoring of nuclear reactors around the world—the first time a policy institute has joined a particle physics project. Ferenc will discuss recent work he’s done with colleagues at MIT and Lawrence Livermore National Lab on the sensitivity of seismically cued antineutrino detectors for nuclear explosions. At the Middlebury Institute Ferenc also teaches courses in Missiles and Missile Defense, Science & Technology for Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies, and Nuclear Treaty Verification. Prior to joining the Middlebury Institute, he worked at the Princeton Program on Science and Global Security, the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany, and the Laboratori Nazionali del Gan Sasso in Italy.

Sponsored by One Middlebury and Physics Department.