Conference summary

This paper summarises the great variety of topics presented at this conference, which has focused on the effects of ionising radiation on scintillators and other particle detectors. Of central interest to many of the participants was the use of such detectors in experiments at two future large hadron colliders: the Superconducting Super Collider to be operating outside Dallas in the United States by the turn of the decade and its European counterpart the Large Hadron Collider to be operating outside Geneva in Switzerland on a similar time scale. Their goal is to uncover the elusive Higgs particle and thereby set the cornerstone in our current knowledge of elementary particle interactions. The purpose of the conference was to discuss how such an experiment is carried out; why radiation damage is an issue; how radiation damage affects detectors; which factors affect radiation damage characteristics; which factors are not affected by radiation damage; and how better detectors may be constructed. (author)