The Executive Committee convened by conference call at 11 AM EDT on
May 1, 2002. 10 members were present. The members in attendance were:
Meigan
Aronson
Dave Belanger
Paul Butler
Takeshi Egami
Costas Stassis
John Tranquada
David Vaknin
Angus Wilkinson
Andrey Zheludev
Wouter Montfrooij
Paul
opened with a summary of the status of the ACNS conference organization
and answered some questions. The meeting is shaping up well with over
250 abstracts submitted. The website (www.sns.gov/acns) is regularly
updated and is a good way to keep up with what is going on. Some sessions
have had to be expanded to 4 parallel sessions and we’ve gone
from 2 to 3 poster session. The CNMS (center for nanophase materials
science) workshop was mentioned. It is having its second planning workshop
to refine the original focus areas of the center. Given that obviously
it is hoped that the center will leverage the proximity of the SNS and
emphasize the use of neutrons in nanoscience, they decided to have a
symposium with tutorials and example lectures on the Sunday prior to
the ACNS meeting taking advantage of having the large number of neutron
“experts” gathered for the ACNS. Some concern was voiced
with the overlap of the workshop with the meeting. That overlap will
be Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning (they are encouraging their
people to attend the opening plenary sessions of the ACNS Monday morning).
It was judged that this was not a real issue.
Every
one was encouraged to register before the early registration deadline
of May 15. Also Dave Belanger encouraged people to have students apply
for travel grants to come to the meeting. The application is on the
web.
A
discussion about an executive committee meeting at the ACNS but prior
to the 20 minute Tuesday session ensued. It was decided that John and
Paul would try to organize a room and times with the plan being to attempt
to meet from 5-5:30PM Sunday the 23rd prior to the reception to develop
an “agenda” of questions/issues to bring to HFIR and SNS.
Following the reception at 7:00 we would try to get Herb Mook, Jim Roberto,
Thom Mason, and Greg Smith to join the executive committee for discussions.
A discussion of what to present to the community at the ACNS user meeting
was had. Meigan made the point that perhaps we should inform people
by email ahead of time to come with their concerns and use the 20 min
of open meeting for the community to talk to us rather than the other
way around. While there was some doubt as to how effective that might
be, it was agreed that in principle that was a good idea and John will
craft an email informing people of the session at the ACNS and asking
them to bring their concerns to us there, while also emphasizing our
availability via email and encourage input through any venue. We would
ask Al Ekkebus to distribute this to the SNS mailing list. Also John
suggested that it would be good to use this meeting to generate interest
in others willing to serve on the committee who might stand for elections
in the fall.
A
discussion of the role SHUG should play in the development of the user
program at HFIR was had. Issues discussed include:
Costas
Stassis agreed to call a meeting of the HFIR subcommittee soon to discuss
some of these issues.
There
was general agreement that a meeting at ORNL involving visiting some
of the people on the ground was a good idea. The suggestion was made
that before the ACNS would be good, but that appears to be too difficult.
Maybe at a later date. Mentioned as people to visit were Al Ekkebus
and Greg Smith on user program development, Lou Santodonato on sample
environment, some software people covering plans from acquisition and
instrument control, to online data access, to reduction, visualization
and analysis tools, to web interfaces for access to the facility in
general and access to computational resources in general.
The
meeting adjourned at 12:15PM EDT
Respectfully
submitted,
Paul Butler
SHUG Secretary
