Potomac parley presents particle physics project prioritization panel
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Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, just south of Washington, DC, has seen its share of American history since its founding in 1669. As a 17-year-old surveyor's helper, George Washington helped lay out the city's pattern of streets and later drilled Revolutionary troops in Market Square. Earlier this month, at its meeting in Alexandria, the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel made history once again by laying out for the troops of U.S. high-energy physics the new Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel. Dubbed P5, it represents the field's first formal organization to evaluate and rank "medium-sized "particle physics projects on a national scale.
Physicist Fred Gilman, of Carnegie-Mellon University, HEPAP's chair, presented the P5 charge to panel members on November 7, the first day of the panel's two-day Alexandria meeting. Gilman also announced the group's membership and its chair, Abe Seiden of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Gilman said P5 would be organized as a subpanel of HEPAP with a two-year lifetime. Following the traditional subpanel model, P5 will communicate its advice to HEPAP, which will in turn transmit its recommendations to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, the federal agencies that fund U.S. particle physics. The recommendations would then be used to update the "roadmap "of projects constituting the national program of particle physics research.
Gilman defined the "medium-sized projects" within P5's purview as those costing between $50 million and $600 million.
The lively discussion among HEPAP members and others following Gilman's presentation centered on how and by whom projects would be presented to the P5 group for consideration, with most agreeing that proposals would come through the funding agencies to the subpanel.
An official of the Administration's Office of Management and Budget, listening to the discussion from the audience, said he hoped that P5 members would include all unfunded projects, even those previously approved, in the prioritization process. In contrast, some other scientific fields follow a practice of prioritizing only new proposals, rather than considering the entire slate of as-yet-unfunded projects.
Earlier in the day, HEPAP members heard from DOE Office of Science Director Raymond Orbach, who opened his remarks by acknowledging the budgetary difficulties confronting the field of particle physics.
"We have seen flat budgets for the Office of Science for the past ten years, resulting in a twenty percent decrease in effective funding." Orbach said."No field feels that more than high-energy physics."
Nevertheless, Orbach said, he wants U.S. particle physics to be the best in the world.
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"It is critical that we maintain scientific leadership," he said. "My immediate goal is to call attention to the scientific opportunities for high-energy physics in this century. I hope that these opportunities will change this funding picture."
Orbach encouraged HEPAP to produce a plan to ensure continued U.S. leadership in high energy physics research and called the formation of the P5 panel "terribly important." He also pointed to the special role of accelerators and accelerator research in DOE Office of Science research programs.
"Every program that we have, in one way or another, depends on accelerators," he said."I want to call attention to the opportunities that accelerator science brings."
Orbach said he was pleased with the results of the recent DOE review of Tevatron luminosity,held at Fermilab October 28-31, and expressed confidence that both Fermilab and SLAC are "very well run," despite funding problems that put them "up against the wall." He encouraged HEPAP to work with Fermilab to maximize the Tevatron's performance in the period before Europe's Large Hadron Collider begins operating later in the decade.
"This may require massive contributions from the community," Orbach said. "I ask you to bring all the power you have to bear in the high-energy physics community. It may mean taking unusual steps, but I urge you to work with Fermilab to see a path forward. I just don't want us to be second. It would be awful if we didn't marshal our resources. I know it will be difficult, but I encourage you to do this."
P5 membership
Abe Seiden (chair) University of California, Santa Cruz
William Marciano, Brookhaven
Pat Burchat, Stanford University
Marjorie Shapiro, LBNL, Berkeley
Eugene Beier, University of Pennsylvania
Boris Kayser, Fermilab
Dan Green, Fermilab
Ritchie Patterson, Cornell University
Melvin Shochet, University of Chicago
Elizabeth Simmons, Boston University
Gary Feldman, Harvard University
Marc Kamionkowski, California Institute of Technology
Jay Marx, LBNL, Berkeley
Charles Prescott, SLAC
Tor Raubenheimer, SLAC
HEPAP membership
Professor Frederick J. Gilman, Chair, Carnegie Mellon University
Professor Paul R. Avery, University of Florida
Professor Jonathan A. Bagger, The Johns Hopkins University
Professor Keith Baker, Hampton University
Dr.Joel Butler, Fermilab Professor Ronald C. Davidson, Princeton University and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Professor David G. Hitlin, California Institute of Technology
Professor Young-Kee Kim, University of California at Berkeley
Professor Paul G. Langacker, University of Pennsylvania
Professor Angel M. Lopez, University of Puerto Rico
Dr.Vera G. Luth, SLAC
Professor Rene Ong, University of California at Los Angeles
Professor J. Ritchie Patterson, Cornell University
Dr.Stephen G. Peggs, Brookhaven
Dr.Natalie A. Roe, Berkeley Lab
Professor Randall Ruchti, University of Notre Dame
Dr.John T. Seeman, SLAC
Professor Stanley G. Wojcicki, Stanford University
P5 Charge
A letter to HEPAP Chair Fred Gilman, signed by DOE Office of Science Director Raymond Orbach and NSF Acting Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Science John Hunt, presented the charge to P5.
In January 2002 the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) unanimously endorsed the report of the Long-Range Planning Subpanel chaired by Jonathan Bagger and Barry Barish, which created a twenty-year vision for the field of particle physics. One of the central recommendations of the Subpanel was the creation of a Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5). The Subpanel felt that the U.S. particle physics program would greatly benefit from this new mechanism to assess and prioritize mid-scale initiatives. We agree that, given the significant number of such proposals for exciting new science now on the table, and the overall constraints on financial and human resources, P5 can perform an important function. Thus we are writing to ask you to implement this important function.
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We request that HEPAP form a Subpanel that will be the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel. The membership should represent those communities in particle physics and related fields that can give independent advice on the relative merits of the various projects considered. P5 should evaluate for HEPAP the merits of specific proposals, and [make] recommendations concerning their priority standing in the context of the national high-energy physics program. In particular, this Subpanel should recommend priorities for mid-size (approximately $50M to $600M in total project cost) particle physics projects. These projects should have already received endorsement from their respective laboratories' Program Advisory Committee(s) (if based at a national lab), or an equivalent external peer-review process that can assess the merit of the proposals, such as the Scientific Assessment Group for Experiments in Non-Accelerator Physics. The funding agencies will convey to you an initial set of proposals for P5 consideration in a separate communication. Projects that may require consideration during the timeframe of the Subpanel will be referred to P5 by the funding agencies as they arise.
The proposals referred to P5 will typically have already developed fairly detailed cost estimates. While we do not expect P5 to do an extensive review of costs, to be most helpful, in their report to HEPAP, P5 should comment on the appropriateness of existing cost estimates; indicate what funding levels are expected to be required by these new projects if they are approved (including R & D, engineering, design, pre-operations, operations, and possibly construction of new facilities); and evaluate what the scientific impacts would be if sufficient funding is not available during the timeframe of the projects under consideration. As part of its work, the Subpanel will naturally be gathering information about proposed and possible future opportunities. It will use this knowledge, together with its recommendations on projects, to update the project "roadmap" for the field created by the Long- Range Planning Subpanel. That roadmap identified decision points on a given project's path from research and development, to construction, and then to operation.
In assessing physics priorities, the Subpanel should weigh physics importance and the overall balance of the field within the context of available resources, including available funding and manpower, timescales, and other programmatic concerns. It will consider projects across particle physics, broadly defined, and across funding sources. Where relevant, the Subpanel should consider the international context of proposals, their relation to the programs of related fields such as nuclear physics and astrophysics, and their broader impacts on science and society. While understanding the broad physics program context in which these projects exist is vital for properly evaluating and prioritizing the individual projects, that context itself is outside the purview of P5. Advice on the general direction and overall priorities for the U.S. particle physics program is properly the responsibility of HEPAP itself, and any advice provided to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation should reflect HEPAP's views.
We look forward to the creation of the P5 Subpanel in the near future. We would like to have periodic status reports to HEPAP on the work of the Subpanel beginning in 2003, with a final report by the end of 2004.
We wish you success in this challenging and important endeavor.
by Judy Jackson