The Third High Energy Cosmic Radiation Detection (HERD) Workshop was held at Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics from January 19 to 21.

The workshop attracted about 50 scientists and scholars, among which 18 were international scientists from the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), the University of Geneva, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Tokyo and other institutions around the world.

Prof. ZHANG Shuangnan, chief scientist of the HERD program, chaired the workshop. During the workshop, talks were given regarding the up-to-date progress of HERD, including preliminary results from HERD beam test at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, silicon tracker layout, dark matter search at HERD, galactic cosmic rays search and prospects for gamma-ray astronomy science. Participants also discussed the objectives and working plan of the HERD international collaboration.

HERD facility is one of the Cosmic Lighthouse Program onboard China's Space Station, planned to be launched between 2020 and 2015. The main science objectives of HERD are detecting dark matter particle and studying of the cosmic ray composition and high energy gamma-ray observations.