The Personal Blog of Stephen Sekula

Balancing Research and DC

The winter conferences are nearly upon the BaBar collaboration, and many deadlines are fast approaching. While my own work is far from ready for presentation at a conference, a lot of the physicists who work in my physics working group are getting fired up for them. As a result, I’m balancing my own research against the review needs of my peers on the BaBar experiment. In addition, it’s nearly one month to the SLAC Users’ trip to Washington D.C., and we’re getting ready to make our office appointments. Lots of work abounds in the beginning of 2006.

This is also the shortest gap between any two BaBar collaboration meetings in a given year. There was a meeting in December, and we have one at the end of this month to shore up for the winter and spring conferences, and make plans for summer. With the winter break, it feels like there is only about a month between these two meetings. I have to be very careful to balance my priorities in the coming weeks. Thank goodness I work with an excellent team for the Washington trip, and excellent students and professors from MIT. Whew!