UGPS

Within a few years, all of the large U.S. collider programs will be completed and literally half of all U.S. HEP experimentalists will be working on one of the LHC experiments.

Does this have ramifications for how HEP will be viewed within your physics department? Will it enhance or reduce the interest that future graduate students will have in HEP? Are you comfortable that you can maintain the sort of visibility within your department that you and your colleagues might have enjoyed in the past?

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Is it important to maintain breadth in the HEP program?

Everyone in a physics department understands why it is desirable to have a strong group working at the LHC, but it is also true that smaller scale efforts in areas outside the energy frontier can have a footprint at a University proportionately larger than the investment. Smaller scale endeavors can bear a stamp of University "ownership" and even hold a presence in a department in different way than large-scale efforts at remote facilities.

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

HEP has very publicly embraced the scientific "inner space - outer space" connection in the last few years. Are we living up to that emphasis in our actual deployment of resources? Should we?

How are we doing in actually learning how to cross the boundaries between accelerator-based experiments and more astrophysical experiments? Have you succeeded in making this transition? Are the funding agencies supportive of groups attempting to juggle both "conventional" and astrophysics/cosmological ventures? Are we too far in one direction? Not enough? Just right?

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Conclusions of multiple review panels are that an ILC should be the next step in HEP.

What do you think of these conclusions? What's the "roadmap" of how your group will involve itself in both on-going experiments and ILC R&D -- now, through the next 2 decades...think far ahead.

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:18 PM | Permalink

Theoretical High Energy Physics has been "in the news" lately with books critical of String Theory and reviews of those books in important periodicals.

What do you think about the "State of HEP Theory" in the U.S.? Is there too much, not enough, or just enough balance between very formal theory and theory more applicable to experimental measurements?

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:16 PM | Permalink

HEP is unusual in having two funding agencies which each have relatively stable relationships with their university grant holders.

What do you think of the job done by DOE and NSF in supporting university programs? What's great about it now? Where could it be better? Is the balance of DOE vs NSF funding appropriate? Is the separation between historically NSF and DOE universities appropriate? Have you had the experience of moving from one department to another and having to change agencies because of an unwritten rule about who funds what university?

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:15 PM | Permalink

What do you see as the relationship between our national laboratories and HEP in our universities?

Has this relationship been beneficial? Will it stay the same? Should the role of the national labs change in order to meet new challenges?

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:14 PM | Permalink

Many are concerned about the technical infrastructure at their universities devoted to HEP detector construction, analysis, and computing.

How do you see the future in this regard? If you have technicians, specialized senior research associates, engineers now...what do you think is the future of those people? If a problem exists, do you have ideas on how to mitigate it? Or, did you lose your infrastructure years ago? What do you see as the need for such personnel in the medium to long future?

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:13 PM | Permalink

HEP is changing.

How do you feel about the future of the field? Look around your department and picture HEP in 2015, 2020...what do you see?

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:11 PM | Permalink

HEP has been saying "Higgs" very publicly for 20 years. If a Standard Model Higgs Boson is not found where it's expected at the LHC...

...what do you think would be the most likely explanation? ;-)

Posted by Chip Brock at 05:09 PM | Permalink