MoEDAL is a pioneering experiment designed to search for highly ionizing avatars of new physics such as magnetic monopoles or massive (pseudo-)stable charged particles. Its physics program defines over 34 scenarios that yield potentially revolutionary insights into such foundational questions as: are there extra dimensions or new symmetries; what is the mechanism for the generation of mass; does magnetic charge exist; what is the nature of dark matter; and, how did the big-bang develop.  MoEDAL's purpose is to meet such far-reaching challenges at the frontier of the field. The MoEDAL collaboration has tripled in size since its final approval in 2010 and now includes over 60 physicists institutes from over 20 institutes on 4 continents.

The innovative MoEDAL experiment employs unconventional methodologies tuned to the prospect of discovery physics. The largely passive MoEDAL detector, deployed at Point 8 on the LHC ring, has a dual nature. First, it acts like a giant camera, comprised of nuclear track detectors - analyzed offline by ultra fast scanning microscopes - sensitive only to new physics.  Second, it is uniquely able to trap highly ionizing particle messengers of physics beyond the Standard Model - for example the Magnetic Monopole -  for further study. Last, but not least, MoEDAL's radiation environment is monitored by a state-of-the-art real-time TimePix pixel detector array.

MoEDAL’s sensitivity is complementary to that of the main LHC detectors ATLAS and CMS - extending the discovery horizon of the LHC. The very nature of the MoEDAL detector renders it insensitive to all Standard Model particles and immune to a background of fake signals. Importantly, MoEDAL is the first collider detector to be able to provide a permanent record of discovery physics that can be examined time and again – rather than a set of fleeting triggered flashes in electronic-digital space as in the case with all other collider detectors.  Test detectors were deployed in 2012 and analysed in 2013 and the full MoEDAL detector was installed without a hitch in the winter of 2014 and started to “officially” take data in the spring of 2015.

At their 4^th Collaboration meeting on the 10^th and 11^th of December the MoEDAL Collaboration looked back over a successful year. The first data from test detectors from 2012 exposed to proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions are being analysed. Our first physics result paper – based on data taken with a prototype trapping detector deployed for 8TeV centre of mass energy (E_CM) collisions – is in its final stages of preparation.  We now have our first year of proton-proton data taken at 13 TeV and Pb-Pb collisions at an E_CM  of  around 5 TeV.

This year the Royal Society of London chose CERN’s MoEDAL experiment and its “Monopole Quest” as the sole particle physics exhibit at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition. The thousands of visitors to the exhibit took part in a number of activities at the MoEDAL exhibit. They could design their own monopole detector, take part in the “Citizen Science” project to search online for monopole tracks in exposed MoEDAL plastic nuclear track detectors, and, test MoEDAL trapping volumes for captured monopoles. Alternatively they could visualize a Dirac monopole and investigate radioactivity on their cell phones using a MoEDAL TimePix Chip.  The success of the MoEDAL exhibit was greatly aided by the students of the Star Institute at the  Simon Langton School – a full member of the MoEDAL Collaboration which is the first particle physics experiment to have a secondary school as a full member of the collaboration. A photograph part – one shift -  of the MoEDAL exhibit team is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Members of the MoEDAL at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition on shift at the first Soiree. In the photograph we have: Arttu Rajantie  Imperial College London), first left; Mairi Sakellariadou (King's College London), third from the left; James Pinfold (The spokesman of MoEDAl from University of Alberta), in the middle; and Beck Parker (Simon Langton School), far right.