News from Science Board - July 2010

STFC’s Science Board held its most recent meeting on 28^th - 29^th July 2010 at The Cosener’s House, Abingdon. Science Board’s business included a discussion on the comprehensive spending review, updates from PPAN (Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics) and PALS (Physical and Life Sciences), and a presentation from the STFC Science in Society team.

The majority of the meeting was devoted to a discussion of options for managing the impact of potential comprehensive spending review outcomes. Science Board was requested by the Executive to provide advice to help guide further input to BIS (Department for Business Innovation and Skills). In order to construct this advice, Science Board discussed a number of thought provoking scenarios designed to explore the sort of issues that the Executive may be confronted with if there were to be a significant funding reduction as a result of the 2010 comprehensive spending review settlement. As a result of these deliberations Science Board provided the Executive with guidance on how to take forward this strategic planning.

Science Board received reports from the Chair of PALS and Chair of PPAN.

PALS met on 14^th – 15^th July 2010 at Polaris House, Swindon. PALS business included a presentation on the Imaging Solution Gateway Centre and a review of PALS’ previous work on the Health and Ageing Review. Further work on the science roadmap was also undertaken; PALS distilled the science challenges identified from its last meeting into five science themes and identified the techniques and facility developments required for each theme. PALS also discussed the facilities funding model, received an update on the Large Facilities Capital Fund and discussed some ideas about FEL (free electron laser) light sources.

PPAN met on 20^th July 2010 at Polaris House, Swindon. PPAN received two PPRP (Projects Peer Review Panel) reports; the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) UK collaboration’s proposal for participating in the ATLAS upgrade programme and a four year GridPP4 (Particle Physics Grid) project to deliver full-scale Grid computing facilities for the exploitation of LHC (Large Hadron Collider) data. PPAN also received a report on the review of the rolling grant applications for gravitational waves research. PPAN moved onto the next stage of the development of the science roadmap; PPAN reviewed the science challenges in readiness for distribution to the Advisory Panels for comment and started to identify elements of the roadmap.

Science Board also received an update report from the STFC Science in Society (SiS) team, which included the annual report for 2009/10 from the Science in Society Advisory Panel. Science Board discussed the difficulty of measuring the impact of a programme such as SiS and commended the SiS team for the work they were doing on trying to define better metrics. Science Board noted the importance of a Science in Society (SiS) programme, stressing that in the current financial climate public engagement was a highly valuable thing to do.

The next meeting of Science Board will take place on 12^th - 13^th October 2010.