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Town Hall meeting discusses ARIEL development

26 January 2017

On Wednesday January 11, 2017, the TRIUMF Users Group (TUG), and the ARIEL Project Management Team hosted a Town Hall meeting in the TRIUMF auditorium.  During the full-day event, the ARIEL-II project plan and the construction schedule were presented and users were given the opportunity to ask questions, provide initial feedback and explore ways to contribute to the ARIEL project.  The Town Hall was very well attended and proved to be a productive meeting with lively exchanges of views and ideas. 

The day began with talks from Deputy Director Reiner Kruecken and ARIEL Principal Scientist Adam Garnsworthy outlining the current status of the ARIEL project and the opportunities for science it will create at each stage of completion. In particular, Dr. Garnsworthy asked the TUG to respond with their vision of the first science goals and priorities for various aspects of the ARIEL science program.  Talks covering technical and operational developments of many areas of the project took up the middle portion of the day.  The main message to that point was that ARIEL development is proceeding well, while the construction timeline is driven by manpower constraints.  Those sessions were followed by a discussion, led by Dr. Kruecken, outlining various scenarios for possibly speeding up the ARIEL construction schedule.  Feedback from the users regarding the proposed alternative shutdown schedules was also requested.  The day ended with a free-form discussion of the topics addressed during the Town Hall, led by TUEC Chair Kyle Leach (Colorado School of Mines) and the ALD-Physical Sciences, Jens Dilling.

Completion of the Town Hall was only the end of the beginning.  During the ARIEL Science Workshop this past summer, a request was made for the TUG to establish an ARIEL user committee to provide formal feedback on the planned project phases. This committee, chaired by Dr. Leach, is comprised of sub-group leaders representing fields within ARIEL’s scientific portfolio (materials science, nuclear medicine, precision measurements/fundamental symmetries, nuclear astrophysics, nuclear structure, and low-energy and accelerated ARIEL/ISAC beams).   These sub-group leaders were tasked with collecting feedback from the user community in the coming weeks. Following the Town Hall meeting, this committee will generate a response document for the ARIEL Project Management Team, based on user inputs and comments regarding the proposed plan.

As Dr. Kruecken stated during the meeting, the Town Hall effectively kicks off the next Five-Year Plan cycle for TRIUMF and it begins by soliciting and collecting feedback from the TRIUMF user community.  There is much work to be done and the TRIUMF users are encouraged to be actively engaged in the strategic planning process.