Minutes of UEC Meeting 22 March 2003
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Present:  John Conway, Leslie Groer, Andy Haas, Sharon Hagopian, 
          Martin Hennecke, Joey Huston, Rob Plunkett, Paul Sheldon, 
	  Wendy Taylor, Bob Tschirhart, Chris White, Eric Zimmermann

Guests: Mike Witherell, Herman White, SLUO (by video)


1. HEPAP report

Paul Sheldon reported on the recent HEPAP meeting.  Marv Goldberg and John
O'Fallon reviewed the status of funding. At present the funding for DOE looks
flat, but for NSF there is optimism that the budget increases will help the
Elementary Particle Physics Division.

The UEC gave a report to HEPAP.  The report discussed concerns about new
security procedures, outlined our outreach plans with regards to our trip to
DC, outlined our plans for this years’ User Meeting, and challenged HEPAP to
take a strong, independent leadership role.  HEPAP members were invited to the
Users’ Meeting.  HEPAP suggested that the UEC do a better job at recruiting
non-US scientists to serve on the UEC.

Discussion followed with a few HEPAP members agreeing that
HEPAP has not shown strong leadership (e.g. substantive
discussions on meaningful topics rarely occur during full meetings).
For example, the facilities report (which was to be a major topic during
the meeting) was not completed in time resulting in no meaningful
discussion. Not all HEPAP members agreed with this assertion.

The lab directors from the various HEP facilities outlined the status 
of their labs. All shared their tales of woe regarding lack of adequate 
funds.

Slides from the meeting can be found at http://doe-hep.hep.net/hepap.html


2. Status of the Laboratory  - Mike Witherell

The Tevatron suffered the loss of 16 days due to two  magnets. The previous
time between magnet losses was 15 months.  During the winter shutdown, the
Lambertson  magnet at C0 used for the abort during Fixed Target running, was
removed.  This made it possible to inject and store more protons without
passing the stability limit.  A new record initial luminosity has been set:
4e31, and for a given size of the antiproton stack, the recent stores are 20%
higher.  The present trend would allow a 4.5e31 store with around 170 mA in
the  antiproton stack.  The antiproton stack rate becomes very low for larger
stacks, so further increases will come from improvements in emittance and
transfer rates.  There will be a systematic program to correct the measured
rolls in Tevatron magnets during the summer shutdown. The Booster is getting
1.8 times the number of protons for MiniBooNe compared to the preshutdown
value. The dog leg in the Booster causes losses and is under study. Valery
Lebedev has developed a parametric model for the Tevatron that matches the
present performance, which should help in planning improvements.

CDF and D0 are running efficiently and recording data steadily, and by summer
should break new ground scientifically.

Mike showed the HEP Facilities summary table from Appendix D  of the HEP
Facilities Report 20 year Roadmap.  The table has the cost estimate, scientific
potential , and possible time scales listed for 7 facilities and 5 experiments.
(See http://doe-hep.hep.net/hepap.html). 


3. DC trip (with SLUO by video)

Nine members of the Fermilab UEC, four Fermilab GSA officers, seven members of
SLAC SLUO, and three additional colleagues will make the trip to Washington,
DC, to meet with various members of Congress and their staff. 

Following some logistic details, the content of the one-page document, 
to be given out, was discussed. The bottom line asks for support
for HR 34, which is a House resolution requesting  increases in funding for the
DOE Office of Science over the next three years. However there was general
agreement that this may still be useful to mention to Senators or their staff, 
in order to  generate a similar measure in the Senate.

The message we are focusing on this year was  discussed.  Support for the
physical sciences is again the main message, with an appeal for the Office of
Science and high energy physics in  particular.

  Appointments have been scheduled with ~ 50 Senators and 80 House of
Representative members or their scientific staff, as well as with
representatives of OMB and OSTP. Initial appointment assignments have 
been made. Final assignments will be done at a meeting at the URA office
the morning of March 26th. 

  Helpful advice and tips from Judy Jackson, Head of Fermilab Public Affairs,
April Burke, URA lobbyist, Neil Calder, SLAC Director of Communications,
and Patrick Fulton, Stanford lobbyist, have been greatly appreciated.
The cooperation between the UEC and the SLAC SLUO group has been especially
close this year and increases the effectiveness of the trip.


4. Fermilab Annual Users Meeting

   This year's Fermilab Annual Users Meeting will be held June 2-3 to be
followed by the New Perspectives Graduate Student Conference. The Annual
Meeting will include a panel discussion on the future of Fermilab.
Suggestions for panel members are welcome. It is very important for both 
U.S. and non-US users to attend this meeting. 
 
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     | The next UEC meetings are scheduled for April 26 and May 17. | 
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