NIU has been involved in detector R&D using scintillation counters and new types of solid-state photodetectors (like SiPMs or MPPCs) since 2001. Some of the latest results on inviduals cells read out with direct (that is fiberless) coupling are in this NIM paper (2008) and LCWS talk (2008) .

NIU is also a member of the CALICE collaboration (CAlorimeter for the LInear Collider Experiment) which is developing calorimeters with small readout cell sizes with a goal to improve energy resolutions through the use of particle/energy flow algorithms. Data has beem collected in 2006 and 2007 CERN test beam runs and at Fermilab in 2008. NIU constructed the Tail Catcgher/Muon tracker (TCMT) which is used to measure the energy of hadronic showers after the roughly 5 lambda this ECAL+HCAL.