I’ve concluded two of my eight seminars for September and October. So far, I am having a wonderful time, I’m meeting a lot of new colleagues in the field, and I’m getting very positive feedback both on my talk and the physics content. If you’re interested in following my travels through New England, Canada, and the Midwest, you can do so in my personal blog [1].
The SLAC Users’ Organization Annual Meeting – 2008
SLAC’s program is evolving into an extremely diverse future, with the heart of the laboratory – the linear accelerator – concentrated at the frontier of ultrafast x-ray science. The users of this laboratory are also naturally going to diversity, and earlier this year the SLAC Users’ Organization, SLUO, hosted a one-day event to peek forward and see how the many science opportunities may serve to redefine the SLAC user community.
The SLUO annual meeting, to be held this next week on Sept. 18, will spend the day exploring these new user communities. Beginning with an introduction to the lab management’s view of the lab, and presentations by key individuals invested in the federal effort to support science, the meeting will use panel discussions, fueled by expert and audience input, to probe further the new definitions of our diverse user community.
The effort to better define and serve the SLAC user community cannot succeed with you. You can find out more about the meeting, and most importantly register to attend, at http://www-group.slac.stanford.edu/sluo/2008meeting/default.asp. You can attend the meeting remotely, via phone, using the connection information available on the agenda.
The LHC Awakening
While I realize that the planned circulation of beam in the LHC on Sept. 10 is just a tiny step on the way to full operations of the LHC, I wish my colleagues and friends at CERN the best as they push off the dock and embark on the next great journey in collider physics!
For a summary of the science and the sensationalism surrounding this event, check the news [1].