Minutes of the April 13, 2002 Meeting of the Fermilab Users' Executive Committee (UEC) Attendees: John Conway(conway@fnal.gov) Robin Erbacher(robine@fnal.gov) Joey Huston(huston@pa.msu.edu) Sally Koutsoliotas(koutslts@bucknell.edu) Larry Nodulman(ljn@fnal.gov) Rob Plunkett(plunk@fnal.gov) Roger Rusack(rusack@hep.umn.edu) Rick St. Denis(stdenis@fnal.gov) Benn Tannenbaum(benn@physics.ucla.edu) Wendy Taylor{wendyt@fnal.gov) Sherry Towers(smjt@fnal.go) Gordon Watts(gwatts@fnal.gov) Chris White(cwhite@fnal.gov) Freya Blekman(GSA) Mike Kirby (GSA) Heather Ray (GSA) Michel Sorel (GSA) Absent: Nate Goldschmidt (GSA) Guests Judy Jackson, Marge Bardeen, Glen Crawford, Dave Gerdes, Homer Neal, Phil Yager, Herman White Benn called the meeting to order at 10 AM. We decided not to break up for subcommittees but to do subcommittee reports. Subcommittee reports: Users Meeting (June 10-11) Robin (who was moving and joined the meeting later) has been keeping people informed with e-mails, it would be nice to have a rough outline of the meeting schedule. Outreach A possibility beyond the Museum of Science and Industry has been suggested, that is for a display at O'Hare, and Chris will look into it. Inreach Rick reported that they met for lunch at Chez Leon and are proposing several young people's forums at the Users Center. The first has been scheduled for May 29 and will focus on career perspectives. Several people have been recruited to talk about different career paths. A second session would be on leadership, and Bruce Chrisman has so far been recruited. A third proposed session could be on lifestyles. Quality of Life Not much to report, people have been busy. A meeting with Bruce Chrisman is to be set up for early May to talk about taxi service and Eola Rd path proposals etc. Reminders of particular assignments will be sent out. Chris discussed his UEC presentation to the URA review committee. He discussed security issues, subcommittee activity, quality of life issues that have been raised (taxi, path, trailer cleaning, geese, health care info). The committee liked the idea of putting health care options on the web. The DC trip issue of foreign involvement was well received also. Benn discussed his meeting with Mike Witherell. Mike will address CDF April 18th, and D0 at its next collaboration meeting, the week of April 22. Luminosity issue is people, "the right people," not money. The 19.3 M$ cap on NLC work is in the 03 budget proposal, would imply about 3M$ at Fermilab while 8M$ would be needed for work planned at Fermilab. The DOE HEP funding increase over the last 4 years will be 4%, it would take a 10% increase to recover inflation for that. At the DOE review, all but the Tevatron were well received (LHC/CMS/NUMI/MiniBoone). Beams has had several hires but also people have gone. The Lab is conducting searches for Beams Division Head (replacing John Marriner) and Computing Division Head (replacing Matthias Kasemann). Note, Bob Kephart has replaced Peter Limon (Technical Division Head). The NSF budget sum is ok but physics is cut hard due to initiatives, LIGO and MSU cyclotron operations, frontier centers, etc. NSF university funding is down substantially; this will be taken as a huge cut to the one third of grants which renew this year. The crunch would continue for two more years. Judy Jackson, DC Message discussion There was no anticipation of the NSF cuts. The source seems to be very high up at NSF. NSF has tapped reserves to ameliorate what would have been an 11% cut in University funding to 8%, or 24% for those whose grants renew this year. Fred Gilman and George Trilling have been consulted; a letter to Rita Colwell from UEC was not regarded as potentially effective but other letters are being sought. It would not hurt for us to complain about this during our Congressional visit. Rita Colwell has been challenged on physics base funding during Congressional hearings. Fred Gilman and Mel Shochet have been visiting Congressional staffs and used a variant of a draft of our one page summary. A discussion of the one page document got started and will be continued electronically; the result is appended to these minutes. Marge Bardeen, DC message on Quarknet Handouts and bookmarks will be provided. A one page summary has been made. Marge emphasized three points: 1) teachers and students are brought into our community 2) this is a national partnership with local communities, anticipating an NSF educational direction 3) Quarknet is long term, to extend through the life of the LHC! Many cosmic ray detectors have been built, teachers have gone to CERN and Fermilab. The NSF "Eisenhower" staff development program is being replaced with NSF "partnerships" which involve 5 year grants for research scientists and local school districts. Quarknet is currently funded with mostly DOE and NSF research funding and some NSF education money. The one page summary includes participating institutions and statistics and a summary of how the program progresses over years of participation. Any school district anywhere in the US is welcome to participate. Judy Jackson, DC message continued over lunch Judy passed out a list of "hard questions" for us to ponder in case we are asked. She offered the position on LC as to focus on the 20 year plan, with crisp priorities and the need for R&D, not attempting to prematurely sell funding LC as a project. Various materials for distribution will be available. Although we represent Fermilab, and that is what is written on the souvenir rulers, we should think broader, supporting HEP in general for example. We were reminded to support the DOE Office of Science letters, Bingaman/Warner in the Senate, and Biggert/Tauscher in the House. And members of the appropriations subcommittees are targets rather than signers to be recruited for the letters. Judy is on a communications crusade, giving talks at conferences (the Users Meeting?) and organizing an international collaboration for HEP communication, will push giving "heads up" on announcements, making sure previous work gets credit, making a bank of images available, and emphasizing relations with other areas of physics. Glen Crawford, DOE Perspective Glen is the DOE HEP lab monitor for Fermilab. He discussed the recent DOE annual review of Fermilab which was characterized as "not a love fest." Lots of advice was generated, lots of new ideas to reinvigorate the directorate. In addition to formal reviews, Glen makes contacts with officials as well as front line people. The review had a good set of outside consultants. Note that DOE review procedure is that each consultant sends in a letter to DOE and John O'Fallon summarizes the result in a letter to Mike Witherell. The number one issue was the poor luminosity of Run II, and how that is being confronted. There is concern that beams division is getting, and is able to use, the help it needs. Management has admitted it is a crisis and is trying to get help. A worry is that management concerns are not being communicated. The message to the directorate was to find all possible resources including contacting other labs. SLAC and LBL help is coming and CERN people may be coming. Also, the directorate needs to convey the seriousness of the situation to the community. A Lehmann like review of progress may happen in 6 months but is avoidable. The Run IIa problem particularly threatens Run IIb. On the experiments, CDF seemed ready but not D0, and there was a Run IIb cost containment problem. The rest of the program got good marks. Asked about what we should be telling Congress, Glen thought that the overall HEP funding level by itself would be a hard sell. HEP is making choices, turning things off, but there is not much remaining flexibility, there are lots of mortgages. One million dollars is not as small as it was. Rather than emphasizing HEP alone, he advised discussing physical science overall. Dave Gerdes, Linear Collider issues re: Washington trip Before getting to the LC talk points provided to us per request, Dave gave his thoughts on the message to Congress. He advised (as a previous Congressional visitor) that the emphasis should be on physical science in general, not narrowly HEP, that we need to take a positive view (no points for criticizing anyone else), and show enthusiasm for our science. Anti-withering arguments don't play well, old fields should wither. We will need to deal with large variations in how much the people we will see know about science. We should emphasize the DOE science role, the role of universities in the research and funding, and Quarknet etc., that it is not just the local facilities congressional districts involved. Then perhaps that LC is taking shape as a future component. The talking points passed out included seven bullet points suitable to discuss and some background information we should be aware of. (Note: Homer Neal joined by phone) Joey Huston, DC trip review We meet at URA the morning of April 24th, visits will be that afternoon and the 25th. We will have a dinner the evening of the 24th. About half the desired appointments have been made. Joey has been a bit distracted by the NSF funding problem. A role playing session for interviews will be arranged. People should be persistent about getting the appointments that are still pending. Next UEC meeting will be April 24 at URA, then May 11 (before the Users Meeting). =============================================================================== Appendix: 1 page summary used in DC visit Support High Energy Physics The science of matter, energy, space, and time ----------------------------------------------- High energy physicists seek to understand the most profound questions about the nature of our universe: of what it is made, how it works, and from where it came. They study the most fundamental particles and the forces between them. Experimental discoveries and theoretical insights over the past decades have made it possible to begin to understand how a rich and complex cosmos could evolve from elementary particles. In addition, by pushing the limits of technology, high energy physics (HEP) has contributed immensely to the development of essential technologies in fields like advanced computing, materials science and biomedical imaging. The U.S. has been at the forefront of HEP since its beginning in the 1950s. Work conducted by university and laboratory scientists and their students at the nation's large HEP facilities, such as the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, has led to great advances in our understanding of the structure of the universe, and we now expect to enter a new era of discovery in particle physics. Yet at the end of this decade, leadership in our field will shift to Europe unless the U.S. commits itself to future support of the physical sciences and of HEP. High energy physics is funded almost exclusively through grants from the federal government, particularly from the DOE Office of Science and the NSF. At the beginning of this year, a new plan from the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) to the DOE and the NSF set forth a twenty- year vision for HEP that includes increased funding to take full advantage of our investment in current research projects, as well to perform R&D towards the next prestigious world facility, a high-energy linear collider. This new plan will help to ensure that the U.S. remains a world leader in international science. While the President's budget for FY03 prioritizes science, it falls significantly short of the necessary investment in existing programs at Fermilab and SLAC, let alone in research towards a future program. Indeed, support of HEP programs has not matched inflation for an entire decade, and the FY03 budget is no exception: the President has requested $724.9 million for DOE's HEP program, only 1.7% more than last year. What is needed now, to profit from the world-class facilities we have built, is an increase of 10%, to $785 million, in the Energy and Water Bill. The President's budget request for NSF's Physics program calls for a decrease in support by 1.3%. To support the existing investments and to continue the NSF's mission, an increase of 15% to a total of $225 million in the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies Appropriations bill is very much needed. Please support increased funding for the U.S. HEP program in FY 2003. Without a federal commitment, the United States will not be able to take advantage of the opportunities for major discoveries or innovations that are commensurate with our investments in these world-class facilities, nor will it allow the U.S. to prepare for the future so that we can remain world leaders in this dynamic field of science.