Bragg Institute News
The major news is the announcement by the Commonwealth Government of an extra $37M in capital funds, as part of its May 12th Budget, for a new split cold neutron guide on CG2, 3 extra instruments (a 2nd SANS, a backscattering spectrometer, and neutron radiography) and some new sample-environment apparatus. We are now in the process of hiring new staff to implement this decision, and will run a workshop on 27-28 August to scope the capital project in more detail. All interested parties are welcome to attend. This new capital project will be led by Frank Klose.
Finally, the National Deuteration Facility was merged into the Bragg Institute on July 1st, and we formed a new Soft-Matter Group comprising the soft matter scientists doing small-angle scattering and reflectometry (with both neutrons and x-rays) together with the NDF staff, all under the leadership of Peter Holden.
3rd Proposal Round
The May proposal round was heavily subscribed, with over 150 proposals received for the neutron beam instruments and the NDF. Program Proposals, where multiple beamtime allocations can be requested for up to 3 years, were offered for the first time and 20 such proposals were submitted. Program proposal allocations are limited to 25% of the total time on each instrument, so a maximum of one program was available on each instrument.
We experienced good demand across all instruments and the NDF, with particularly heavy demand on Quokka (>400% of the available time) to the point that many excellent proposals cannot be run in the coming round. There was also strong overseas demand, with 36% of proposals coming from outside Australia.
The Program Advisory Committee met to consider the proposals on July 20 and 21 and recommended that 3 program proposals, 102 normal proposals and 7 NDF proposals be approved. Unsuccessful program proposals were also considered for one-off allocation along with the normal round proposals.