Home  |  Past Issues  |  Contact Us  | RHIC
 

 

About the Author

Abhay Deshpande is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Stony Brook University, and has been a member of the PHENIX experiment and the RHIC Spin Collaboration since 2000. He is Chair of the RHIC & AGS Users Executive Committee.

2008 RHIC AGS User’s Meeting

By Abhay Deshpande

Friends the 2008 RHIC AGS User’s meeting will be held on May 27- May 30, 2008. We hope you will participate with your usual enthusiasm. The registration page has been setup and can be found from the User’s Center Web page or directly from the 2008 User’s meeting webpage URL: http://www.bnl.gov/rhic_ags/users_meeting/

The organizers, members of the present UEC with the help of some of you in the user community, have come up with a very nice agenda and the exciting week:

  • Tuesday 5/27: Workshops on Heavy Ion, Spin, and other topics
  • Wednesday 5/28: A special symposium on “RHIC & its impact on Nuclear Science” and the User’s meeting dinner
  • Thursday 5/29: In the plenary session, news from RHIC accelerator and PHENIX and STAR experiments on the highlights from Run-8 and reviews of recent results from various experiments, message from the funding agencies, various prize distributions, followed by a round-table discussion on “Women in Science” in the evening
  • Friday 5/30: Presentations by BRAHMS and PHOBOS on what they contributed to the nuclear science from their RHIC years, and the UEC’s Open forum which promises to be a very interesting event.

While each day is of great interest and importance to us, I’d like to specially highlight two events in particular. The Symposium on Impact of RHIC on Nuclear Science to be held on 5/28/2008: Experts in various aspects of RHIC science will review the greatest achievements of RHIC and comment on what they feel is the impact of RHIC on nuclear science. In the afternoon, the opportunities available for RHIC with its luminosity & detector upgrades in near and long-term future will be presented by some of our own colleagues. The organizing committee consisting of Gerry Bunce, Tim Hallman, Barbara Jacak, Dima Kharzeev, Bill Zajc and the Chairs of the UEC, have come up with an exciting program that you should not miss.

The second item on this year's agenda, which I would like to mention is the Users' Open Forum to be held on 5/30/2008. For the last three years, the funding for science in general and RHIC in particular has been difficult. What went wrong? How can we do things better? How can we make our case more effectively? Questions like these and their possible answers have been discussed in the community. Invitations to our stakeholders in Washington have gone out. We await their response. Please come to the Users' Open Forum to discuss your favorite questions.