Notes from the UEC

Looking Ahead to a Bright Year for NSLS, NSLS-II

July 8, 2009

Bruce Ravel
UEC Chair
NIST
bravel@bnl.gov

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It is a great pleasure to bring you this, my first column as chair of our NSLS Users' Executive Committee. With the help of the amazing folks in the Information, Outreach and User Administration Office, we have completed another hugely successful Users' Meeting. The main highlights of the meeting were the updates from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science as well as from BNL management as to the impact that the recent federal stimulus package and the Obama administration's ambitious environmental and energy science policies will have on NSLS and NSLS-II. Our Users' Meeting also continues to be a serious scientific event, drawing top-notch scientists for the plenary sessions.

Despite the fiscal challenges in recent years, our record of scientific success and productivity continued at the NSLS, with numbers for users and publications scarcely showing the effects of the financial difficulties. This year, with full funding for our operations granted to us by Congress, NSLS Chair Chi-Chang Kao was able to report a substantial increase in the NSLS budget. This will allow the NSLS to complete several delayed construction projects, enhance maintenance efforts, purchase detectors, and hire staff and additional beamline support.

The recent federal stimulus package is having a profound impact on NSLS-II. Money from the stimulus plan will be used to front-load the NSLS-II construction budget. This new funding profile will accelerate the construction of the ring and has enabled the project managers to re-evaluate the design of the laboratory and office buildings, adding substantially more user and staff space to the plan.

This is an exciting time for me as chair of the UEC. With new funding, science at the NSLS has been reinvigorated and so requires the involvement of its user community more than ever. There are many new initiatives at the NSLS that can benefit greatly by user participation, including new initiatives for industrial engagement, new efforts at user training and community development, and the creation of new measurement and detection capabilities. The UEC also continues to cooperate with the NSLS and NSLS-II in the work of the Beamline Transition Working Group to identify the crucial elements of the NSLS scientific program, to identify capital resources that can be leveraged for use at NSLS-II, and to organize the transition of those scientific and capital resources to future beamlines at NSLS-II.

In the coming year, the UEC hopes to expand its role to include all the concerns of the Brookhaven Light Sources Directorate to represent user concerns on issues related to both NSLS and NSLS-II. Along with past chair, John Parise, I am working with Chi-Chang and NSLS-II Project Director Steve Dierker to determine how the UEC can expand its role to include issues surrounding NSLS-II. I hope that next year we will see new Special Interest Groups (SpIG) forming around scientific fields relevant to NSLS-II as current SpIG representatives expand their focus to include the effective transition of existing scientific communities to the new source.

As always, we on the UEC welcome feedback from the broader user community. Please feel free to contact your SpIG representative (see http://www.nslsuec.org/) with any questions or concerns. We look forward to seeing you at the next NSLS Town Hall meeting on Thursday, August 27.