The 2008 National User Facility Organization (NUFO) meeting was held at the W.R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) on April 24-25, 2008.
Annual Meeting Overview
In this edition of NUFO News, we’ll summarize what was discussed and decided at the PNNL meeting. For those unable to participate in person, the presentations are available at: http://www.emsl.pnl.gov/nufo2008/presentations.shtml. Nancy Foster-Mills, Theresa Windus, and Amy Selch hosted a most informative and enjoyable meeting. Among the highlights are the following:
- Keynote Address: Dr. Pedro A. Montano, Scientific User Facilities Director in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy, enlightened us on Future Challenges for Basic Energy Sciences User Facilities.
- Presentations: Guest speakers shared their views on communicating with the public and our stakeholders. User administrators discussed the similarities and differences of handling approvals for user access, record keeping, and other common issues and began discussion on standardizing processes across facilities. User representatives spoke about their experiences at various national facilities, highlighting both positive and negative aspects.
- EMSL Tour: Multiple tour guides introduced us to the wide range of equipment and capabilities at this most impressive collection of six user facilities housed within EMSL: http://www.emsl.pnl.gov/capabs/.
NUFO Charter
The first NUFO Charter was adopted on April 25, 2008. It can be viewed at: http://www.nufo.org/charter.asp.
Membership
The definition for NUFO members, as decribed in the adopted charter now includes UEC Chairs or designees, user administrators, and persons historically called interested parties. The membership now consists of voting and non-voting members. Each user facility will have one voting member from the User Executive Committee and one voting user administrator.
Steering Committee
The Charter calls for a Steering Committee consisting of three user organization or executive committee representatives, three user administrators, and three appointed members, which will conduct the yearly business of NUFO and help organize the annual meetings.
Voting
Steering Committee membership will be determined by a vote of the NUFO membership. Voting will be done electronically, and the first election will be announced shortly via e-mail to all voting members.
Communication
Because the major focus of NUFO is communication, it was decided to initiate and enhance the following:
- NUFO News: Periodic news briefs, like this one, will be used to keep the entire NUFO membership informed of what is happening at other facilities, as well as about any outreach requests and efforts. The intention is simple: to keep everyone informed and involved and to provide a mechanism for sharing information.
- Web Page: NUFO has a new web page. It can be found at: http://www.nufo.org. The costs and maintenance for the site are being paid for with non-DOE funds. The site is still under development, with plans for many enhancements. One important enhancement will be the ability to post information about outreach efforts. As enhancements are made, we will notify you. In the meantime, please take a look at the site, and give us your feedback. Comments and suggestions should be sent to info@nufo.org.
- NUFO List Servers: The NUFO list servers have also moved to a .org site. All members in the past have held un-moderated rights to the NUFO list servers. The hosting site has restrictions that will no longer permit un-moderated posting so future posting will need to be moderated. This just means that a web administrator will have to release any messages posted to the list.
Next Annual Meeting
The next NUFO meeting (NUFO 2009) will be co-hosted by the six user facilities at Argonne National Laboratory. Since so many user facilities have their annual meetings in the spring each year there was a request to move the NUFO Annual Meetings into the summer or fall. Pat Dehmer, Deputy Director for the DOE Office of Science has agreed to provide the keynote address, provided the meeting is scheduled when Congress is not in session and we get the date on her calendar quickly. The following sets of dates are currently optimal for Argonne. Please let Susan Strasser know by June 1, 2008, which dates you prefer or can’t make. We’ll then set the date that best fits the majority of our membership.
- June 8-9, 2009
- June 11-12, 2009
- June 16-17, 2009
- June 19-20, 2009
- August 20-21, 2009
- September 10-11, 2009