[Cuga] Users Group Board news- a message from Larry Weinstein

[Lorelei Chopard]

Dear JLab Users,

1) The User Group Board of Directors met in January, shortly after 
Stuart Henderson was announced as the new director.  We heard 
presentations from Mont, Jerry Draayer, Bob Mckeown and many others.  
The talks can be found at 
https://wiki.jlab.org/cugwiki/index.php/UGBoD_Meetings .

     a) We discussed the new lab leadership and the implications of 
having an accelerator scientist as director. Andrew Hutton is planning 
to retire. The current science leadership team is planning to stay.   
The board expressed its support for the science leadership team.

     b) We expressed our concern over accelerator capabilities and 
reliability issues.  We also expressed our concern over the limited 
amount of run time available this year.

     c) We had a preliminary discussion of user involvement in 
scheduling decisions.  Scheduling an experiment is now as important as 
getting PAC approval.  There are two phases to scheduling: individual 
hall priority lists and lab scheduling.  Rolf pointed out that lab 
scheduling is very complicated and requires input from many groups (the 
halls, physics, accelerator, cryo, etc).  There was a strong feeling 
that hall priority lists should be created in an open, formal, 
transparent process.  We anticipate making a formal user group board 
request to the lab after our summer board meeting.

     d) The money allocated by JSA to the Initiatives Fund has decreased 
from $500,000 per year for the first 6 years of JSA, then to $400,000 
for 5 years, and now to $350,000 last year. The initiatives fund 
supports crucial lab activities, including graduate fellowships, the 
director's discretionary fund, the activities of the User Group Board 
(including the annual meeting and the postdoc and thesis prizes), and 
many conferences and workshops.  We will write to the owners of JSA, 
requesting that they continue to fund these crucial activities.

     e) Bob Mckeown mentioned the upcoming Software and Computing Review 
report which stresses the need for the experimental collaborations to 
produce timely results from 12 GeV.

     f) Jianwei Qiu discussed the DOE Comparative Theory Review which 
found that the Theory Group is "performing at an excellent level", but 
that productivity was uneven.

     g) Andy Kowalski presented the IT report.  Please send published 
papers to Kim Kindrew so that they can be included in the data base.  If 
you're upset at changing your password every six months, then thank IT.  
DOE wanted us to change them every three months!

     h) JSA is no longer allowed to subsidize the Quark Cafe. The 
current contract ends in March and is being renegotiated.

     i) Ed Brash continues to serve as the User Group representative on 
the Director's Safety Council.  Angela Biselli will serve as the User 
Group representative on the Diversity and Inclusiveness Council.  Please 
contact them if you have related issues.

2) User Group Board elections will be held in April.  Please send 
nominations to David Armstrong <armd at jlab.org>, the chair of the 
nominating committee, by March 15.  We will elect a new Vice Chair, two 
general board members, the theory representative, and the postdoc 
representative.

3) The Annual User Group Meeting will be held June 19-21.  The theme 
will be the Breadth of JLab Physics with a very broad program of invited 
talks on QCD (Xiandong Ji and Jianwei Qiu), other nuclear physics (Chuck 
Horowitz), Accelerator R&D (Stuart Henderson) and Applications of 
Nuclear Physics (Anna Hayes). Please send talk suggestions to Krishna 
Kumar, who is chairing the organizing committee.

4) The board congratulated Stuart Henderson on his appointment and 
welcomed him to JLab.  I met with Stuart at the APS meeting and was 
quite impressed.  He stressed his commitment to making the accelerator 
reach its full capabilities and to carrying out the exciting 12 GeV 
program.


Sincerely,
Larry Weinstein
UGBOD Chair

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