CAEN Educational Events
CAEN Summer School 2026
July 20 - July 24
The 5th International Summer School on Open FPGA for Nuclear and Scientific Applications will be held at the CAEN S.p.A. Headquarters from July 20 to July 24, 2026.
The program is structured around a balanced combination of theoretical lectures and hands-on laboratory sessions. It will start with the study of front-end electronics algorithms, including digital signal processing techniques commonly used in scientific and nuclear instrumentation, and an introduction to modern digitizers and FPGA-based systems.
Building on this theoretical background, the school will progressively focus on practical FPGA development using the SCI Compiler framework (https://www.sci-compiler.com/), guiding participants through the complete workflow of designing, implementing, and testing firmware for real-time data acquisition and processing.
During the hands-on sessions, each participant will be provided with their own experimental setup, allowing them to directly apply the concepts learned during the lectures. Students will develop complete processing chains—from signal acquisition and filtering to triggering, feature extraction, and data readout—while gaining practical experience in modular FPGA design, debugging, and performance optimization.
The school is targeted at students holding at least a Bachelor’s degree in Physics, Nuclear Engineering, or related fields, and is also open to PhD students and young professionals from industry who wish to deepen their expertise in FPGA programming and data acquisition systems.
