[ASA] Decadal Plan: Call for submissions from National and Institutional-scale Facilities

[Kate.Brooks at csiro.au]

To Directors and Leaders of National and Institutional-scale Astronomy Facilities

I am writing to you in my capacity as Chair of the Decadal Plan Working Group 2.2. for National and Institutional-scale Facilities.

On behalf of the Working Group members I invite you to submit a written report on your facility before 30 April 2014. Your submission will provide valuable input to the report that our Working Group must compile by August 2014.

I also give you the opportunity to make a short (5 min) presentation at one or more of the upcoming Town Hall meetings.

Working Group 2.2 Terms of Reference

Information on the Working Group for National and Institutional-scale Facilities is available from the Working Group's website:
https://sites.google.com/site/australiandecadalplanwg22/home

As established by the National Committee for Astronomy, this Working Group report must:
1. Report on progress against objectives of the previous Decadal Plan.
2. Provide a stock take of current or future proposed capabilities/resources in the area.
3. Identifies any new national or international opportunities/requirements in the area over the period 2016-25.
4. Suggests strategies and the resourcing levels required to maximise these new opportunities.

We are using the same process as that for the 2005-2015 Decadal Plan process, whereby each facility submits a written report. The reports are collated and a summary report will then be written by the Working Group. Submitted facility reports from 2005 are available for download from our website (University Infrastructure.pdf & WG3.2 Report.pdf)

Instructions for written submissions:

Your written submission should be no more than 3 pages in length and provide information under the following sub-headings:
I. Status Update
II. Capabilities
III. Funding Arrangements for next 10 years
IV. Operational arrangements (including community access)
V. High Profile Work done by the Facility (checked against Decadal Plan Key Science Goals)
VI. Immediate Future of the Facility
VII. Future Vision of Facility

As part of the section "Status Update", you should make reference to the priorities noted in your 2005 submitted Facility reports (if applicable).

The funding information should be brief and is in no way binding. The preferred format is the Estimated cost projections (broken down into Capital Expenditure and Operational Expenditure) for 1-3 years, 4-6 years and 7+ years with some indication about the status of the future funding  (i.e. Not funded, funding applied for, not funded yet or contingent on other developments). Please refer to the 2005 summary (WG3.3 report.pdf)

We will leave it to you to determine how you want to flag the high profile work done by your facility over the past decade (e.g. Impact factor, media release, state-of-the art instrument development, official openings). The information provided at this time need only be a set of 3-4 bullet points. This may be expanded upon later to use for "pop-up" boxes in the final Decadal Plan publication. It would be useful to check the high-profile work you list against the Key Science Goals of the 2005-15 Decadal Plan.

Please note that all 2014 submissions will be preserved electronically and released publicly.

Note also that the information provided in the 2014 submissions will be used by the Working Group and the Editorial Board to prioritise the facilities in some way in order to arrive at a final set of key recommendations for future resourcing.

Town Hall Presentations

A series of four Town Hall meeting will be taking place over the next 3 weeks that are relevant for this discussion:

Mar 25: Sydney Town Hall with WGs 2.2-3.4  (W2.2 Chair Michael Burton)
(location: CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Contact: Sarah Pearce

Mar 26: Melbourne  Town Hall with WGs 2.2-3.4 (W2.2 Chair Kate Brooks)
(location: Swinburne University VR Theatre,  Contact: Karl Glazebrook)

Mar 27: Canberra  Town Hall with WGs 2.2-3.4 (W2.2 Chair Andrew Hopkins)
 (location: ANU,  Contact: Martin Asplund)

Apr 3: Perth Town Hall with WGs 2.2-3.4  (W2.2 Chair Steve Tingay)
(location: UWA ICRAR,  Contact: Lister Staveley-Smith)

The final agenda for these meetings will be available from early next week on our website.

At each of these meetings there will be a short presentation from the Working Group on National and Institutional-scale Facilities (the slides will be distributed ahead of the meeting, early next week). In addition some time has been set aside for presentations from the facilities themselves. This is an excellent way for the facilities to share their future vision and flag any discussion points.

We already have confirmed presentations from AAO, ATNF, ANU, MWA and Antarctica. If you would like to make a short (5 min) presentation at one or more of the Town Halls then please contact me as soon as possible.

Please also call me if you have any queries about the submission process.

Kind regards,
Kate Brooks

---
Dr Kate Brooks
Deputy Head Operations, Australia Telescope National Facility
CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science
E Kate.Brooks at csiro.au T +61 2 9372 4649 M 04253 79907
Office 206B, Cnr Vimiera and Pembroke Roads, Marsfield 2121, NSW


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