ECFA ECR Panel meeting

Europe/Zurich
Jan-Hendrik Arling (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DE)), Sarah Louise Williams (University of Cambridge (GB)), Steven Schramm (Universite de Geneve (CH)), Valentina Zaccolo (Universita e INFN Trieste (IT)), Xabier Cid Vidal (Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías)

January 26, 2023

Agenda: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1243800/

First part: old + new panel

Minute-taker: Valentina

Chair: Sarah

 

Meeting starts 10.04 39 attendees

 

Introduction by the organising committee - Sarah Willliams

  • Significant change in the panel composition
  • Todays target is to hand over from old to new panel
  • Summary of the activities of the past year can be found in slide 3
  • It is key to understand if the new panel would like to keep the actual structure (organisation committee/PECFA/RECFA/ WGs)
  • We will vote for this later if the quorum is reached (31 out of 61 members)
  • Meetings structure is summarized in slide 7 
  • Follow up from last meeting: 
    • ECR discussions are promoted for the future both from CERN council and ECFA chairs (see examples from UK s.8)
    • Would be important to appoint contacts for WGs
  • Structure of mandates summarised in s.10
    • Every country that has a major laboratory has rights to have an extra member

 

Summary of report from panel in December 2022 - Steven Schramm

  • Step down structure summarised in s.4: extension of mandates for 2 years formally but one can step down after 1 year or whenever necessary
  • All structure and selection strategies are summarised in the next slides
  • Pawel Sznajder in the chat: “in fact I also have to step down, meaning 2 PECFA Observers need to be appointed”
  • WGs work summarised in s. 8 followed by newsletters summary
  • Question on purpose/longevity of WGs
    • Detector R&D established in the very beginning on request of ECFA
    • The other three maybe can be a bit of on a longer time scale due to the fact that they were created by the ECRs

PECFA/RECFA Updates - Lydia Brenner

  • Gianluca and Pawel have stepped down, so the official appointment of the new member will be in July. Until then both Gianluca and Pawel are in the PECFA. Indeed PECFA and RECFA have a 3 years mandate, this is valid even if you change affiliation country. Until July Gianluca and Pawel are in the PECFA even if not in the ECR panel
  • The new appointed people for PECFA will be able to attend even the July meeting
  • RECFA will visit Czech Rep., Norway, Portugal and Greece in 2023 and fill in a report, contact RECFA delegate (Lydia Brenner) if you represent one of these countries

 

Second part: new panel

Minute-taker second part: Steven

Chair: Valentina/Jan -Hendrik

 

Discussion amongst new panel for steps forward

 

  • Have 48 people connected, mix of old and new, but think it’s mostly new people
  • Should have quorum to ask a few questions
  • Not final decisions, but rather to get feedback and preliminary ideas of how to proceed
  • Poll submitted for feedback, results are below - 100% support for all questions
  • 32 new members, thus we reached quorum of new members (31 required)
  • Need to start collecting nominations for PECFA observers (2x) and organisation committee
  • Wait to decide whether we need a selection committee or not, depending on the number of self-nominations
  • Need to do organisation committee first, tighter timeline, while PECFA only needs to be defined by July
  • For newcomers who want to participate in working groups, in the email we will distribute to volunteer for tasks, there will be the egroups for the working groups so you can get informed about common activities
  • Subscribe to the working groups that you are interested in
  • Poll submitted to ask if a selection committee should be used in case of too many candidates, results below, 100% support
  • Is there the possibility of having a direct vote on panel members instead of a selection committee?
    • Yes it is possible, this has also be done in the past
    • Discussion in original panel was to ensure we had a diversity of different categories in the selected candidates
    • There are probably also ways to combine the two approaches if desired
    • Could decide what to do when you know how many candidates there are, or encourage the selection committee to find a way to involve voting too
    • Will see how many candidates there are, and then have a separate offline vote to decide how to proceed
    • Also note first time the selection committee made a selection, which was proposed to the full panel for endorsement via vote
    • The panel was always asked to give the final vote
  • Now great opportunity to propose new working groups
    • Last time, people proposed names of groups with short descriptions in a google doc, then there was a decision if a given group reached a critical mass or not
  • As for EIC working group, this group is very small, and key members are leaving
    • Even if people sign up, need to find a leader who will organise the meetings
  • Diversity+career working group, now working on analysing the survey
    • Know this group expects to have a meeting soon, makes sense to include new members
    • Google form and information on egroups should be done sooner than later for people to express their interest
  • Any other business?
    • None raised
  • Next meeting by default will be in May
    • Can hold another meeting earlier if anything urgent, but otherwise it will be May

 

There are minutes attached to this event. Show them.
    • 10:00 10:30
      Introduction by the organising committee 30m

      The following points will be covered:
      - Overview of the organising structure of the panel from 2021-22
      - Summary of roles of the "selection committee" in selecting the organising committee and PECFA/RECFA delegates.
      - Summary of points discussed in the September meeting (https://indico.cern.ch/event/1077754/) that were deferred for discussion within the new pattern.
      - Discussion of 'endorsement' procedure within panel.
      - Opportunity for discussion/questions by new panel members.

      Speaker: Sarah Louise Williams (University of Cambridge (GB))
    • 10:30 10:45
      Summary of report from panel in December 2022 15m

      The report produced in December 2022, which discusses the activities of the panel throughout 2021-22, will be summarised

      Speaker: Steven Schramm (Universite de Geneve (CH))
    • 10:45 10:55
      PECFA/RECFA updates 10m
      Speaker: Lydia Brenner (Nikhef National institute for subatomic physics (NL))

      For new members; PECFA is the Plenary ECFA where each country has some delegates based on the size of the country (and CERN). PECFA has two meetings a year, one during EPS (summer) and one at CERN (winter). RECFA is the restricted ECFA where each country (and CERN) has one delegate. RECFA conducts country visits which concludes in a report sent to the ministry and funding agencies in those countries as well as the HEP community in that country. PECFA and RECFA mandates are for 3 years (in coherence with other PECFA and RECFA appointments). The ECR has 5 delegates to the PECFA and 1 delegate to the RECFA. 

       

      This coming year RECFA will visit: The check republic (March), Norway (April), Portugal (September) and Greece (November). If you represent one of these countries please get in contact with the RECFA delegate of the ECR (Lydia Brenner) before this visit. 

      At the end of last year there was a PECFA meeting at CERN where also the ECR showed their results which was well received by the PECFA. The last country visit of the RECFA was to Israel and we included comments to the HEP community in the letter about improving prospects for ECR community in Israel and some additional focus on diversity and inclusion. 

       

      All these mandates of ECR members in the PECFA and RECFA will end in about a year, at which time the committee can propose new member which need to be endorsed in the PECFA meeting in November this year. 

    • 11:00 12:00
      Discussion amongst new panel for steps forward

      In this time we propose to hold a vote amongst new panel members (this is not a formal endorsement) to gauge interest in proceeding with the "structure" established with the previous panel. If this is approved, the organising committee will set up nominations offline for new members of the selection committee, PECFA/RECFA delegates and organising committee members

      Conveners: Jan-Hendrik Arling (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DE)), Valentina Zaccolo (Universita e INFN Trieste (IT))