The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has today (3rd March 2008) released the advice it has received from its Science Board and subcommittees who have over the past few months been conducting a review of all approved STFC programmes.
The Science Board and its sub-committees are to be congratulated for doing an extremely difficult job, and the output of the review will be used to guide the future evolution of our
programme.
Professor Keith Mason
This biennial exercise is aimed at guiding the future evolution of STFC’s programme by evaluating the scientific priority of each project, facility or activity and assessing its likely future productivity. It was based on a standardised set of inputs from the individual project or facility teams.
Among activities which the Science Board rate as most important for the future are the search for gravitational waves, the exploitation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (which is coming on line this year), the new Diamond Light Source, and the second target station at the ISIS neutron spallation source. The SCUBA-2 camera for sub-millimetre astronomy (which is also becoming available this year), exploitation of the Swift Gamma-ray Burst observatory, studies of Venus using the Venus Express spacecraft, and upgrades to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble are also high priority. The Science Board also backed plans to collaborate on a Japanese experiment to study ghostly neutrinos, and a US-led study of Dark Energy, the mysterious, recently discovered component of the Universe, which dominates its energy content.
Looking to the future, Science Board highlighted as important a project to develop the science case for a new light source, development of the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope, a future large area X-ray space observatory, a spacecraft to observe the Sun close up, upgrades to the LHC detectors, an extremely large ground-based optical telescope, and a space-borne gravitational wave observatory. Science Board endorsed participation in the European X-ray Free Electron Laser in Hamburg and the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Darmstadt, and encouraged us to work with the new Linac Coherent Light Source project in Stanford, US.
Commenting on the review, Professor Keith Mason, STFC Chief Executive said ‘It is extremely important to review our entire programme every two years to ensure that we are doing the best possible science. The Science Board and its sub-committees are to be congratulated for doing an extremely difficult job, and the output of the review will be used to guide the future evolution of our programme. I am very pleased to see the number of exciting new projects across the full spectrum of STFC’s science portfolio.”
The release of the Science Board advice will be followed by a period of consultation during which the views of the scientific community will be sought. All of these inputs will be drawn together into an implementation plan that will be considered for approval by STFC Council.
View the Programmatic Review.
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Page last updated: 03 March 2008
by Peter Barratt
