AI on the Front-End at the Electron Ion Collider (EIC)

by Dr Oskar Hartbrich (Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL))

Thursday Sep 10, 2026, 3:30 PM → 4:30 PM Pacific/Honolulu

Room 112 (Watanabe Hall)

The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), the flagship facility construction project of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Physics program to be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory, will be a next-generation machine designed to unravel how the building blocks of matter give rise to the structure of the visible universe. At the heart of this effort is ePIC, a cutting-edge detector built to capture the enormous flow of data produced when electrons and ions collide at high rates. To meet this challenge, the experiment will rely on a modern streaming readout architecture, in which data are continuously recorded rather than filtered through traditional hardware triggers.

This talk will introduce the EIC project and the ePIC detector, highlighting key technologies that make precision measurements possible. I will then focus on emerging opportunities and approaches to apply artificial intelligence directly on the detector front-end electronics. Front-end AI on the detector edge has the potential to enhance data quality, reduce bandwidth demands, and enable new forms of real-time decision making. By combining innovative detector design with intelligent on-board processing, the ePIC collaboration is exploring how AI can help us capture the most useful information while keeping pace with unprecedented data rates.

The presentation will offer an accessible overview of the project, the detector, and how AI-driven approaches may shape the future of experimental nuclear physics at the EIC.