The ACME (HORIZON-INFRA SERV-2023) conference I-DUST (Inter-Disciplinary Underground Science and Technology) is a biennial international conference series established in 2005 and supported by the Low Background Noise Underground Laboratory (LSBB) in France. The meeting brings together communities from the Earth and environmental sciences, physics, engineering, and related domains to share advances in research and technology dedicated to underground environments. By design, I-DUST promotes cross-fertilization between disciplines, encourages dialogue between experimentalists, modelers, and instrumentalists, and stimulates the emergence of new national and international collaborations addressing major scientific challenges. The conference also plays a structuring role in creating, maintaining, and strengthening links within the community of users of underground laboratories.

Underground settings provide rare access to the subsurface while offering exceptional conditions of stability and low disturbance. They therefore constitute privileged observatories for investigating coupled and multi-physical processes across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Within this framework, the conference welcomes experimental, observational, theoretical, and numerical contributions that exploit these environments to improve process understanding, enhance detection capabilities, and develop innovative strategies for measurement, monitoring, and data integration.

Topics of interest span broad scientific families, including geosciences, seismology, hydrogeology, environmental dynamics, atmospheric observation, astrophysics, gravitation, physics of signals and radiation, instrumentation, and systems engineering. Particular attention is paid to approaches that combine multiple parameters, bridge scales, or integrate heterogeneous data in order to better characterize complex natural or engineered systems.

In addition, I-DUST remains open to contributions examining the societal, historical, and governance dimensions associated with major underground infrastructures, including the historical role of the French nuclear deterrence program in the creation of the LSBB. These perspectives contribute to a wider understanding of the role of such facilities in science, technology, and public policy.

A distinctive feature of the conference is the active involvement of industrial stakeholders. Companies and technology developers are invited to present innovations, qualification feedback, and operational experience related to underground installations used as platforms for scientific production, prototype validation, and collaborative research and development.

This year’s edition will take place in Apt (France), from November 3 to 5, providing an environment conducive to in-depth discussions, community building, and the development of future partnerships.