SSRL USERS’ ORGANIZATION
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Meeting Notes - April 17, 2006
10 am - 3 pmSSRLUO-EC
Contact List
Attendees: Joy Andrews, Michael Brzustowicz, Neil Calder, Lisa Downward,
Lisa Dunn, Jesse Guzman, Zsuzsa Hamburger, Britt Hedman, Keith Hodgson, Chris
Kim, Cathy Knotts, Richard Lee, Aaron Lindenberg, Greg Madejski, Hendrik
Ohldag, Piero Pianetta, Bill Schlotter, Steve Sekula, Abner Souffer, Jo Stöhr,
Robert Szilagyi, Glenn Waychunas.
Joy Andrews, SSRLUOEC Chair, welcomed the meeting participants and began the
meeting. Notes and action items (in bold) follow.
Keith Hodgson attended the first part of the meeting to acknowledge the very
positive feedback from user advocacy activities, such as the recent SNUG
meetings in DC.
33nd Annual SSRL Users' Meeting: Chris Kim (Chapman University) and Aaron
Lindenberg (SSRL) will co-chair the next Annual SSRL Users' Meeting on October
12-13, 2006. They circulated an outline of the draft program. It was suggested
that the opening session could include a talk on the process of information
flow in DC and a perspective on how user advocacy impacts this process.
Regarding the scientific highlights and young investigators sessions, it was
suggested that these talks be limited to 20 minutes, including 5 minutes for
discussion. Speakers should be reminded to give a big picture type talk for a
very broad audience. Z.X. Shen was suggested as a possible speaker to share a
retrospective on Bill Oosterhuis, who was a friend of synchrotron radiation
science from its earliest days. Jo Stöhr requested that presentations focus on
areas where SSRL is currently involved, or in areas where we plan to have
active programs, including full field x-ray, soft x-ray imaging, advanced
microscope (K. Luening), state-of-the-art hard x-ray region, tomography,
diffraction imaging/speckle (holography-J. Luning), and new opportunities in
imaging such as those developed for the Archimedes Palimpsest (U. Bergmann).
Additional talks related to ultrafast science could include an LCLS science
overview (big picture talk), lenseless imaging (J. Hadju, paper coming out
shortly), instrumentation/streak camera, slicing sources, or timing experiments
at SPEAR. For the Biology session, several potential topics were suggested:
first crystal structure inside microchip, nanotubes (S. Quake, M. Anderson),
new MC technology/remote access demonstration, SAXS, spectroscopy (combine
simulations, EFT calculations, theoretical calculations).
Suggested topics for joint workshops with the ALS included soft x-ray
scattering experiments and user outreach/advocacy. There was a suggestion to
host a proposal writing workshop covering the process to get beam time at SSRL
and pointers/practice to help new investigators prepare better proposals;
before creating a workshop, however, it is necessary to determine 1) if there
is sufficient interest in having a workshop (minimum would be ~12 people), 2)
what specific elements of the proposal preparation process do people want help
with?
Users are encouraged to submit nominations for SSRLUOEC and for several awards:
SSRL User Community/SNUG Advocacy: Jennie Acrivos suggested a letter from the
SSRLUOEC to Physics Today recognizing the contributions of Bill Oosterhuis.
Glenn Waychunas volunteered to contact Pat Dehmer and to coordinate a draft
letter.
Discussion continued on how can each committee member can better interact with
their respective user communities; SSRL plans to incorporate the ability to
pull mailing lists into the more user friendly web interface tools which are
being developed for the user database.
Peer mentoring by experienced users was discussed to assist new users to
prepare better proposals and get the most out of their allocated beam time. In
order for this to work, users (e.g., SSRLUOEC) would need to commit to an
overlap where the new users assist with experiments scheduled under the
experienced user proposal, then the experienced user would stay on to help the
new user get started. These arrangements would need to made early in the
scheduling process so that the respective proposals could be scheduled
back-to-back.
SSRLUOEC can suggest additional scientists to be considered by the PRP in
reviewing new proposals (provide complete contact information and summary of
expertise: materials/chemistry, environmental/geosciences, biospectroscopy/bio
SAXS, macromolecular crystallography, ultrafast science)
Regarding the dialogue which began in February, the PRP requests specific
recommendations from the SSRLUOEC on how they can better meet the needs of
users; discussion items included:
The Synchrotron and Neutron Users Group (SNUG) visited DC April 9-11, including
a briefing lunch with industry. A bank of research highlights will continue to
be developed for use in the future. A suggestion was made to ask users who
prepare NSF nuggets to forward these for possible inclusion in the bank of user
science examples. Another DC trip is tentatively being discussed for October
and could include an R&D Caucus or Congressional hearing. Users are encouraged
to participate in user advocacy, letter writing campaigns, etc.
SSRL Director's Update: SSRL Director Jo Stöhr discussed plans for increased
user support, instrumentation, and software/web interface. Because some beam
lines are not ready for 500 mA operations, the plan will likely be to conduct
500 mA tests only during scheduled AP days for the first scheduling period in
2007, with the opportunity to schedule further 500 mA tests for 1-2 weeks at a
time later in the run. Upgrades on BL7 are nearing completion, with plans to
re-open BL 7-2 and 7-3 for commissioning in several weeks, to be followed by
BL7-1 later this summer. High on the future priority list are plans to upgrade
equipment on beam line end stations, including computers and software for a
more unifying platform-independent system. The new SSRL Scientific Advisory
Committee (SAC) will meet in July to review new beam lines, including the goal
for 2 new superconducting insertion device lines.
There was a discussion of fill patterns, some users requested reducing fills
from 3 to 2 times a day. Although a few users who conduct long running scans
expressed interest in reducing the number of fills, it was not clear if there
was a consensus on whether this worked best for the majority of users, or for
the facility (optics, etc.).
Outreach, Communications, User Administration: Cathy Knotts made several
announcements, including:
SLUO Update: Abner Souffer and several representatives of the SLAC Users'
Organization (SLUO) participated in this meeting to discuss a joint workshop to
better enable scientific users to communicate their research, the importance of
the facilities, and the need to support basic sciences in general. This
workshop is tentatively scheduled to be held at SLAC on May 26th. Both SSRL and
SLUO expressed interest in continuing a dialogue between the two user groups to
increase interactions and to coordinate activities such as the upcoming
workshop. Lisa Downward volunteered to be the SSRLUOEC liaison with SLUO. SSRL
staff and users are asked to help to publicize the May 26th workshop to their
colleagues, to scientists at SLAC/SSRL, and to other local scientific users.
The meeting adjourned around 3 pm.
Cathy Knotts
The plan is to give away long sleeve t-shirts to people who register early for
SSRL33; indigo blue was the most popular color.
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/users/ssrluo/ssrluoec-fy06.html
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/spiceraward.html
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/kleinaward.html
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/lytleaward.html
SSRL Liaison to SSRL Users' Organization Executive Committee
Last Updated:
12 APR 2007
Content Owner:
C.
Knotts
Page Editor:
Lisa
Dunn