Minutes of STAR Council Meeting
February 27,  2003

The meeting was chaired by Deputy Council Chair Mort Kaplan. John Nelson was called away early in the meeting to work on a DAQ problem at the experiment.

Business:

1) Election of New Deputy Council Chair

This person will serve as Deputy Chair for the coming 12 month period, then serve as Chair for two years, and thereafter serve as Deputy Chair for one further year.

The nominating committee (chaired by Gary Westfall) had earlier circulated candidate statements via e-mail. The two nominees who agreed to stand are Mike Cherney and Bill Christie. Several members of the Council expressed disappointment that a relatively large number of nominees had declined to stand. The election took place by secret ballot and Bill Christie was elected.

2) Extension of Advisory Board Charter

The Advisory Board was established a year ago on a trial basis. Tim Hallman reported that he greatly appreciated the input of the Advisory Board on matters of policy and personnel, such as the appointment of Convenors, and was fully supportive of making the board a permanent part of STAR management. Council Chair Jay Marx (who could not be present) also conveyed his support for continuing the board.

Motion (Trainor/Gagliardi): That the Advisory Board be continued for an indefinite period.
The motion passed with none opposed and two abstentions.

3) Spokesman's Report to Council

Tim Hallman's assessment of STAR identified some areas of current attention, where work remains in progress. These areas include

• Making real advances in scientific understanding
• Web infrastructure
• User infrastructure at BNL
• Management response time
• Oversight of new detectors
• Expanding STAR visibility and impact

In other areas, Tim's assessment was that the current status of STAR is quite healthy — these areas include

• Scientific productivity (papers & other quantitative measures)
• Installation of new detectors
• Operations
• Participation by STAR institutions
• Distribution of talks
• External reviews
• Initiation of plan for future
• Travel support for users
• Vitality of STAR & interest from new institutions
• Support of young scientists
• General esprit de corps

4) Proposal for TOF Barrel based on MRPC Technology

Tim Hallman summarized the physics case for this device, as set out in the proposal. He also summarized the recommendations and comments from the internal STAR review committee chaired by Dick Majka. The Advisory Board has also given strong support to the proposal. Several technical concerns (not considered to be show stoppers) will be addressed by STAR management in parallel with the proposal going forward to BNL management.

Motion (Ritter/Trainor): That the Council supports proceeding with this proposal.
The motion passed unanimously.

5) Request by Cal Tech, NPI (Czech Rep.) & Zagreb Groups to join STAR

The necessary 75% of Council members were not present, and so no formal vote to admit was possible at this meeting. However, the consensus was that the Council should discuss each applicant group, take a straw poll, and follow-up with a formal vote via e-mail. The straw polls on all three applicant institutions indicated no opposing votes.

The Council also received an expression of intent from the U. of Bern to apply to become a STAR institution. The Bern group has been working on STAR under the umbrella of the Yale group. The sense of the Council was that the U. of Bern should be encouraged to formally apply.

Volker Eckardt announced that due to the impending retirement of Peter Seyboth and himself in summer 2004, the MPI-Munich group will no longer exist after that date, and a new group or institution will need to assume responsibility for the FTPC.

6) Report from Council Service Committee

Jerry Hoffmann, chair of this committee, summarized the status of efforts to match-up available manpower with unmanned or undermanned tasks. Extensive records generated in this connection are available on the web in the Council area. There was wide agreement that this effort has been very productive and successful.

7) Report from Council Publication & Talks Policy Committee

Carl Gagliardi, chair, summarized several Publication Policy changes recommended to the Council by this committee. These changes involve formalizing the procedure of early preview by the PWG Convenors of proposed papers, making referee reports and replies to same available to the collaboration, policy on single- or few-author papers based on preliminary STAR results, and policy on erroneous publications.

Motion (Crawford/Hoffmann): That the Council adopt the changes recommended by the Publication & Talks Policy Committee.
The motion passed with one opposed.

(The text of the adopted policies can be found on the STAR website under organization.)

Carl Gagliardi reported on some other publication policy issues considered by his committee, but which were not being addressed by any specific committee recommendation at this time. In this connection, it was the sense of the Council that the written Publication Policies did not need to include language about treatment and discussion of systematic errors in STAR papers.

Motion (Christie/Ritter): That we leave it to the discretion of the Spokesperson to decide case-by-case on co-authorship of STAR papers by individuals who are not STAR collaborators.
The motion passed with two opposed.

8) Report from Junior Members

Kai Schweda reported on some facts and concerns related to the junior members:

• There are currently about 100 juniors
• There have been 15 PhDs so far based on STAR
• The 2nd STAR Junior Workshop was held on Monday February 24
• Current concerns among the juniors members include
  • Lack of permanent position openings for those completing postdoc positions
  • Too few DHCP slots for visitors bringing laptops to BNL (Jim Thomas indicated that BNL ITD has a new head, and this issue is on his radar screen. Jim will follow up.)

9) Scheduling of Next Two Collaboration Meetings

It was agreed that the next STAR Collaboration Meeting will take place during the week of August 11, 2003 at Michigan State. The next meeting after that will likely be held during the first week of January 2004 (just before QM 04). The location of that meeting remains undecided, but it will not be too far distant from the Oakland, CA location of QM 04. Alternatively, a STAR Analysis Meeting may be scheduled in proximity to QM 04 and immediately preceding it, in which case the Collaboration Meeting may be deferred until Spring, 2004.

Minutes recorded by Declan Keane