SSRL USERS’ ORGANIZATION EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Meeting Minutes

October 20, 2000

Attendees: P. Foster (chair), C. Booth, B. Clemens, M. Olmstead, L. Basumallick, K. Hodgson, L. Dunn

Membership

L. Basumallick was introduced as the new student representative.L. Dunn will inform P. Foster of the outcome of the vote once incoming email responses are tallied. P. Allen and R. Scott have been asked to remain on the executive committee to retain continuity rather than having all members of a discipline rotate off the committee in a given year. Vice-chair determination will be made later.

Issues brought up by non-EC membership

 S. Conradson had sent an email about insufficient lack of notice for actinide sample beam time.C. Booth agreed that one month’s notice is not usually sufficient lead time to get actinide samples prepared.

User Housing

K. Hodgson gave an update on the housing issue. Stanford is tentatively planning to fund some user housing on the site. This information has not yet been announced to the public.

Beam Line Capabilities under SPEAR2 and SPEAR3

B. Clemens asserted that it would be useful to get a sample external user assessment on the current thinking for the materials beam lines to determine whether or not the plans will really meet the needs of the community.

The Committee also wants to ensure that useful capabilities are not lost in the SPEAR3 upgrade.

K. Hodgson’s response:

1)there is some thought going into whether or not some beam lines capabilities could be transformed under SPEAR3 to optimize the new capabilities (i.e. BL3-3 could be converted to a low energy line and the current soft x-ray use could be transferred to BL8-2)

2)there has been an ongoing effort to identify new resources that can be implemented with existing beam line instrumentation (i.e. BL1-4 to polymer scattering)

3)another effort is underway to identify new bending magnet or insertion device developments. SPEAR3 bending magnets will be comparable to SPEAR2 insertion devices.

General User Community Feedback

The SSRLUO-EC would like more information from the general user community on their level of satisfaction with the current facilities and ideas for future capabilities.

Possible mechanisms for broader feedback include:

• Email communications
• End of Run Summaries
• Round table discussions at SSRLUO-EC meetings facilitated by SSRL staff
• Web-based chat room directed to the staff primarily involved

• User community response to budget crisis made a significant difference to final budget outcome. There is still a $5M shortfall for beam lines upgrades under SPEAR3 and severe space issues associated with funding provided for new initiatives. (labs, user set-up, offices, etc.)
• Can outcome of workshops and BL12 concepts be made available?
• Corwin mentioned that Si400s cannot be run with the standard crystal setup on 11-2
• Marilyn raised the question of data set reduction instead of FTPing on BL9-2
• Hodgson stated that as part of the genomics program planning is underway to develop BL11-3 for protein crystallography and materials scattering. Part of the funding is coming from Scripps
• PRTs are being required to help support cost of beam line upgrades necessary for SPEAR3 to keep PRT status