Minutes, HEDSA Steering Committee Conference Call

October 18, 2006, 4:35-5:45 PM (Eastern Time)

On the line: Bedros Afeyan, Ron Davidson, Paul Drake, David Hammer, Warren Mori, Margaret Murnane

1. The meeting formally started at 4:35 PM when all members of the Steering Committee had joined the call.
2. The agenda for the meeting is given at the end. We began with agenda item 1

1. a.) (Report by Bedros) High Energy Density User’s project: Members of the HEDSUP committee have been chosen. They are Afeyan (PRI), Falcone (UC Berkeley) and Ditmire (UT, Austin), as well as Hauer from DOE, Osterheld from LLNL, Fernandez from LANL and Leeper from SNLA. HEDSUP will meet at noon on Wednesday November 1 st at APS/DPP in Philadelphia. Through the help of many, such as David Meyerhofer, Chris Keane and Allan Hauer, DOE has included in the FY’07 budget that there be outside scientist experiments funded on the intermediate scale laser facilities at the three NNSA Stockpile Stewardship labs, LANL, SNLA and LLNL. The respective laser facilities are called Trident, Z-Beamlet and Jupiter. There may be from half a million to a million dollars available for this new activity this fiscal year. The three labs were charged with conducting the solicitation of proposals individually and with rules and methods discussed with the DOE. LANL took the initiative early and made a broad solicitation. They also had some internal funds to go along with what may come from the DOE. This initiative was led by George Kyrala. Don Corell is the person in charge of the new initiative at LLNL. He asked specific groups with good contacts and working relationships with the lab as well as all UC campus scientists to apply. The entire solicitation period was very short. Less than two weeks so elaborate calls for proposals was not possible. Sandia also solicited proposals but from whom and how is not known to us. John Porter was in charge at the time of the solicitation and now maybe Ray Leeper is. All three labs submitted within the tight DOE deadline their favorite proposals to NNSA for review and further evaluation. If the money does flow and these experiments take place in calendar year ’07 sometime, it will have been two years of work to get there with a formal program of NNSA-sponsored use of their facilities by outside scientists. [Action item for HEDSA members] we must keep the pressure on NNSA and the Congress to make sure this program grows. The current focus is to open up the largest NNSA facilities to peer-reviewed, non-mission-oriented science use. The longer term goal is to have a national program with a national solicitation and a pool of scientists doing HEDP work and training the next generation of HEDP scientists with state of the art machines such as those at the National Labs and at our universities.

• b.) (Report by Paul) As of 1 PM, Oct. 18, there were 18 paid members (with two members of the Executive Committee still to sign-up). There were also 11 purchases of box lunches for the HEDSA meeting at 12 noon, October 31, at the Philadelphia Marriott. Paul reported that the funds are going into a special checking sub-account of the account he uses for his high-energy-density summer school. Thus, payment of expenses by check is possible. (Our sign-up web site is a part of the sign-up site that Paul uses for the summer school.) It was also reported that non-HEDSA-member visitors to our lunch meeting could sign up on the membership sign-up web site for lunch without signing up as members.
  
• c.) (Report by Margaret) The HEDSA web site, http://www.hedsa.org, is now up thanks to webmaster Rachael Tearle. Contributions for posting on the web site should be sent to her. There is a link on the web site to the membership sign-up web site. Bedros suggested that we look at the wavelet.org web site for ideas about what we should do with the HEDSA web site, especially when it comes to the Wavelet Digest missive that is sent out via e-mail periodically. This newsletter includes wonderful ads for preprints, job opportunities, conference listings, upcoming events, publications, tutorials, etc. If we are to do as much as people would like with the web site, it is evident that we will need many volunteers from our ranks to do much of the work.
  
• d.) (Report by Warren) Discussions with HED grad students at UCLA suggested that grad students would like to see job listings from labs, post doc ads and links to useful information for grad students, including papers, talks and reports. Margaret suggested that Warren work directly with Rachael. It was also suggested that Warren (or someone) might contact the recruiters at the labs who are at APS/DPP to see if they will post jobs on the HEDSA web site.
  
• e.) (Report by Dave) The HEDSA annual meeting will be at 12:00 noon until 1:30PM on Tuesday, October 31, at the Philadelphia Marriott, Conference room 501. We are allowed to bring our own LCD projector and so I will do so. We have ordered a screen ($40) and box lunches will be ordered for those who pay in advance plus our two NNSA speakers. We have requested a U-shaped table for 25.

2. a.) Recruiting methods at the APS/DPP were suggested and discussed by several people. Information sheets about HEDSA should be available in the area of the registration desk. We should make an announcement of our existence at the DPP Executive Committee meeting and the business meeting. We should post notices on the notice/message board. We should hand out information sheets to appropriate individuals at posters, etc. We should also send out an invitation to join HEDSA to the APS-DPP membership through the DPP Secretary-Treasurer.

• b.) We discussed the question of who is eligible and who isn’t according to the by-laws as presently written and agreed that we shouldn’t change anything at present. (For example, LLE HED scientists who are not in management positions are eligible as University of Rochester employees, but PPPL scientists who are not on the faculty or students of Princeton University are not eligible as PPPL is a national laboratory.)
  
• c.) A lengthy discussion of what should/might be done with the web site was carried out as part of agenda item 1c.

3. It was generally agreed that opinion should be sought from the membership on issues that come up, but it is up to the Steering Committee to develop and vote on positions that might be taken. When our collective opinion is sought, or when we choose to offer it, the Chair of the Executive Committee or the Point of Contact with NNSA is the appropriate person to communicate the HEDSA position, including whether there is or isn’t a consensus on a particular issue.
   
4. There was no other business and so the meeting was adjourned at 5:45PM.

Proposed Agenda:

1. Status of HEDSA and what we have accomplished (20 min)

• a.) HEDSUP (Bedros)
• b.) Membership (Initial number without dues; paid up members so far) (Paul)
• c.) Web site report (Margaret)
• d.) Graduate student Committee activity (Warren)
• e.) Arrangements for Annual Meeting (Dave)

2. What we would like to do next (20 min)

• a.) Should we actively solicit new regular and student members at APS/DPP? (We could also announce our existence at the DPP business meeting.)
• b.) How should we respond to HED scientists from gov't labs who want to join?
• c.) How much should be on our web site instead of only links? (e.g., one-pagers by all paid regular members and HED grad students)

3. Communicating our collective opinion (10 min)
   
4. Other