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Dear JLab Users, <br>
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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 <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.jlab.org%2Fcugwiki%2Findex.php%2FUGBoD_Meetings&data=01%7C01%7Clweinste%40odu.edu%7C227dbf61b33d4bd3d11308d45db78de1%7C48bf86e811a24b8a8cb368d8be2227f3%7C0&sdata=8TPAjq46dlwC%2B0Y15D0N7b9nglvP9nzoikrxy9eCUCM%3D&reserved=0"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://wiki.jlab.org/cugwiki/index.php/UGBoD_Meetings</a>
. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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! <br>
<br>
h) JSA is no longer allowed to subsidize the Quark Cafe.
The current contract ends in March and is being renegotiated.
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
2) User Group Board elections will be held in April. Please
send nominations to David Armstrong <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:armd@jlab.org"
moz-do-not-send="true"><armd@jlab.org></a>, 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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Sincerely,
Larry Weinstein
UGBOD Chair</pre>
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