OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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Project Scientist Report

John Davies

UK Royal Observatory Edinburgh

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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FP5 Project

FP5 Contract finished 29 February 2004. Final reports accepted by EC Final Payment arrived at PPARC 2 weeks ago, but

some issues with EC being resolved before distribution.

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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Networking• Summary. Going well, no budget anomalies and

no major delays caused by late contract signature• N1. Management team in place and working well• UKATC bankrolling several networks• Various PR activities (Pens, JENAM

presentations, handouts, posters).• Large GANTT Chart available on your memory

sticks.

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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N2. ENO Five Main Activities

Local Directors Meetings

LASER Traffic system

Site charcterisation

Solar Physics Information system

Outreach

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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N2 ENO Detailed report circulated by IAC.

Spending behind schedule due to late contract signature preventing hardware purchases but expected to accelerate soon.

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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N3.1- ELT

Full time project scientist (Isobel Hook) recruited.

50% OPTICON 50% PPARC

ELT meeting and presentations at Berlin ’04 meeting

Glossy brochure written

Florence meeting in November to produce written science case as input for design study

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OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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N3.2 NUVA

Special issue of A & A being prepared

Plan to advance conference 1 year after STIS failure and COS installation delay

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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• N3.3 HTRA.

Joint meetings with JRA-3

• N3.4 AVO.

OPTICON support is planned to phase out by Mid 2005 as AVO obtains own funds.

Design Study bid approved for VO-TECH. However, possible request for Euro 10, 000 extra in 2005-6 to support bids for funds for the Data Centre Alliance.

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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• N3.5 Key Technology Working Group

CRC to report today

Meeting here on Wednesday

• N3.6 Future Astronomy Software Environment.

Operating in Twiki mode so far, face to face meeting planned Dec 04 at ESO

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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• N4. Space-Ground Synergy.

Meetings planned but not yet implemented.

• N5. Interferometry

Fully active. First exchange visits (5) have already been approved.

Two working groups almost established.

Leige meeting on Next Generation Interferometers held in August

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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N6 Telescope Network

• Tel-Dir forum meets next month to review ‘over-success’ of access programme.

• Office at IAC has produced several detailed reports and web pages

• NEON Like school held at ESO summer 04. New Marie Curie programme approved on 2nd try.

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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JRA Summary• All activities are underway.• Some work packages have remained on schedule

by using institutional funds.• Most are delayed by of order 6 months since it has

not been possible to award subcontracts or hire staff until the EU funds were assured.

• Project office maintaining watching brief, but detailed scrutiny of all activities impossible.

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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JRA Leaders

• JRA 1 Adaptive Optics. – N.Hubin

• JRA 2 Fast Detectors for AO – P. Feautrier

• JRA 3 Optical Detectors for HTRA – S.Wagner

• JRA 4 Interferometry – A. Chelli

• JRA 5 Smart Focal Planes – C.Cunningham

• JRA 6 VPH Gratings – F. Zerbi

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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Annual Report and Year 2 Budget 1st Report due at EC by 15 Feb 2005, giving both progress to date and

next 18 month plan.

The next tranche of EU payments depends on this report being prepared to a tight schedule.

Executive need to approve detailed plans at their January 05 meeting for inclusion in this document.

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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EU supplied draft template for annual report requires a level of detailed input comparable to the contract.

Template supplied to all JRA &Network leaders for this meeting as prototype for this process, but few returned so far.

JRA, Network and Access leaders must supply info to Project in timely manner and in the required formats

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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Concerns• Potential problem obtaining final budget

statements from large multi-institute contractors on required schedule

• I3 leaders will try to clarify/modify/ simplify these requirements at workshop in Brussels to be held in November

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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Travel to Board and executive meetings

There is no specific budget to support travel to board meetings. We propose that since in most cases the costs of agency representatives attending board and executive meetings is less than 3% of the EU contribution through OPTICON, those agencies meet these costs from their overheads.

Exceptions are contractors with only small (or zero) budgets. We propose

• The Lieden representative will be funded by NOVA

• The IAP representative will be funded by INSU

• The EAS representatives will be funded by the N1 network.

• The GCNA, SANW RDS and RA3 have been assigned budgetsfor board travel from the N1 network

Network, Access and JRA representatives are funded from their activity budget.

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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Access Programme• Despite initial concerns about slow ramp-up this activity is

significantly oversubscribed.

• Oversubscription of some facilities implies they will complete contract in 2-3 years.

• Executive wishes to smooth spending over longer period to ensure continuity across final years of programme and into FP7

• Telescope Directors aware of these issues and are planning a detailed discussion leading to costed strategies at their November meeting

OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004

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Access Programme - Issues• Many qualifying users have probably got own

funds. Looks to some like business as usual• Low take-up in year 1 by Central Europe- reasons

for this are being investigated• What are our socio-economics goals exactly?