Two of our key advisory committees met at the Institute this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Program Advisory Committee (above left) chaired by Prof. Anton Middelberg (University of Queensland), met to assess the scientific merit of beam-time and deuteration proposals submitted for time between October 2010 and March 2011.
In general, the impression was that the quality of both proposals and external reviewing had increased significantly. 2 programs and 108 experiments were recommended for approval, with beam time allocations as follows: 79 days on Echidna, 73 days on Wombat, 68 days on Kowari, 76 days on Koala, 80 days on Platypus and 70 days on Quokka.
The variation in time allocated is mainly due to existing commitments to program proposals, and in part to the existing backlog on the instruments from previous rounds.
Taipan proposals have been put in rank order by scientific merit, but the beam-time allocation will have to await our submission of the operating license to our nuclear regulator ARPANSA. Feedback from this review, along with advice regarding beam-time allocations, should go out to users within a week.
On Thursday and Friday, the Beam Instruments Advisory Group (above right), chaired by Dr. Dan Neumann (NIST Center for Neutron Research, USA), met to review progress on all of our major capital projects, including the $37M Neutron Beam Expansion Project.
The latter includes the BILBY Time-of-Flight Small-Angle Instrument, the DINGO Neutron Radiography/Tomography/Imaging Station, and the the EMU Back-Scattering Spectrometer.
Published: 27/07/2010