Minutes of SHUG Executive Committee Meeting of May 9, 2003
The Executive Committee convened by conference call at 1:00 PM EDT on May 9, 2003. 9 of the 11 members were present. The members in attendance were:
- Paul Butler (Secretary)
- Zema Chowdhuri
- Takeshi Egami (Chair)
- Christina Hoffmann
- Joanna Krueger (Chair Elect)
- Nancy Ross
- Paul Sokol
- David Vaknin
- Angus Wilkinson
Thom Mason, director of the SNS project, was invited to join this meeting to discuss the status of the SNS project. Thom began by informing us that SNS had just completed a review the day before which had gone very well. The project is now 60% complete and still on track to be on time and on budget. The 20% contingency on the remaining work is tight but acceptable. With regards to physical facilities, the accelerator and accumulator ring buildings are finished, the target and CLO (central lab and office) buildings are progressing rapidly, the front end has been recommissioned up to 51mA, and the linac hardware is now working well. Development of the mercury target is going well, with the latest tests indicating that the lifetime of the target vessel will be acceptable even without any of several improvements currently being studied. Finally the CNMS (center for nanophase material science) building which is not part of SNS but will be built contiguous to the CLO and have strong reciprocal links with SNS will begin construction this summer.
On the instrumentation side, 16 of a potential 24 instruments have now been approved and 13 have funding in place. As for the mix of IDT vs IAT instruments, Thom pointed out that so far all instruments, regardless of funding model, will make 75% of the time available to the general user program and that all instruments will be staffed by SNS thus providing a seamless integration across instruments. Asked about staffing levels, Thom expects to have 5-6 FTE's per instrument by the time the user program starts. That is contingent on obtaining the full $150-160M/year in operating funds as a large number of fixed costs will necessarily squeeze the personnel budget if that target is not met. Asked about the status of data acquisition and analysis software development, Thom indicated that there have been a couple of recent hires on the data acquisition side, while on the data analysis side Caltech, which is building one of the IDT instruments, is working on a framework, DANSE (white paper available through SNS website) and that all the North American neutron facilities have agreed to work together on data analysis. Even though SNS will likely be the largest neutron scattering center in the country, it cannot hope to achieve alone what the combined efforts can. Queried about the current view of when full scale user operation would commence, Thom said middle of 2008, as stated in the white paper distributed to the committee last year, is still the target, but that relatively intense beams, capable of doing lots of good science would be available much earlier and that some kind of informal program would be in place to utilize it as much as possible with those users who are willing to accept the risks associated with beta testing an instrument and a facility.
Other developments include NSF offering a new grant program with up to $2 million/year for instrumentation at SNS. Avenues for private funding of the lodging facility such as is being done at Brookhaven for example are being pursued. If successful, that would free up the state JINS (joint institute for neutron sciences) money to build more office, conference and meeting facilities, probably adjacent to the lodging facilities. Finally, the proposal to include a doubling of the beam power and building the second target station in the BES 20 year plan got very good review from the advisory committee.
Takeshi asked Thom to keep the committee informed as to the state of the operational funding as it will be extremely important to the user community that the instruments be adequately staffed. He also asked Thom if there was any input from the committee that SNS is looking for in the near future to which Thom suggested that the exact nature of the lodging facility is an issue that will be coming up soon and on which input from the community would in fact be much appreciated.
Next Takeshi asked that the date for the on sight visit be finalized. Of the two possible dates, Monday June 30 and Tuesday July 1, Takeshi suggested that Monday would probably be better. There being no dissent, the visit was set for June 30. Takeshi asked for suggestions of specific topics to bring up the meeting. Topics/suggestions should be e-mailed to Joanna and Takeshi. Zema suggested sample environment as an important relevant topic.
Discussion then turned to the Fast Access draft proposal. Paul Butler and Paul Sokol had had a number of email exchanges on the last draft culminating in an off line phone discussion. Paul Butler summarized the main issue as being the line suggesting that the decision on allocating fast access time would be primarily left to the instrument scientist. Given the sensitivity of the community to conflicts of interest, it was felt inappropriate for SHUG to be suggesting this. Angus pointed out that his main concern and intent was to ensure that “fast” is truly “fast.” A definition of fast was then discussed with a consensus being that a decision should be made in less than 10 days. It was suggested that this definition rather than how to implement it should be quoted in the proposal. In the end this is a proposal to HFIR to institute a pilot program which should ultimately be tweaked with input from the community through SHUG as it develops. Angus agreed to edit that section to reflect the concerns and then circulate the final draft for approval.
Finally, with Takeshi moving to UT/ORNL June 1, Joanna will be taking over as chair, leaving the vice chair position vacant. Pursuant to the bylaws, a new vice chair should be selected. As this position is not also chair elect (i.e. the vice chair will only serve out the remainder of Joanna’s term as vice chair, with a new vice-chair/chair elect being elected from next year’s incoming members), Takeshi suggested that it be open to new and old members alike. Paul Sokol was nominated and accepted the nomination. There being no other nominations or volunteers, Paul was unanimously accepted as the new vice chair.
Paul Butler suggested that he could forward a copy of the white paper referred to be Thom Mason regarding the SNS schedule sent to the committee last year for the benefit of those new members who have not seen it.
There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 2:00PM EDT
Respectfully submitted,
Paul Butler
SHUG Secretary
