Text of Charge II ----------------- Can the ANASAC make a set of recommendations as to where they think the Universities could best get involved with ALMA operations? We are most interested in getting input on the general process for deciding how development funds are prioritized scientifically, and then the process for deciding how best to implement these priorities. The exact detailed programs are less of an issue, since these will evolve with time and depend on available funding, although if [the ANASAC has] some specific recommendations in the near term, those are welcome. 10/26/06 Final Response to Charge II ------------------------------------ (1) We recommend that the ANASAC-- perhaps reconceived as the ALMA Users Committee-- be the main conduit for *general* input from the North American "community" to the ALMA project on the subject of development funds. We feel that the distinctive aspects of ALMA (e.g., the international partnership, the formal role of Canada as part of the North American partner, and the close scientific connection with university sub/millimeter observatories) argue for maintaining an ANASAC that is separate from the NRAO Users Committee. We also feel that a relatively small but representative group will be able to provide more timely, focused, and generally useful suggestions than large and potentially unwieldy workshops aimed solely at soliciting "community" input. (The latter strategy has been tried by the Gemini project, with only mixed success.) As an important additional source of general feedback, we suggest that each future NAASC *Science* Workshop include time for open discussion of how to optimize use of ALMA for its particular theme, as was done for NRAO's current facilities at the January 2006 "Z-Machines to ALMA" workshop. The interests of different subsets of the North American user base can be balanced at or above the ANASAC level. (2) We recommend that the current and future ANASAC routinely consider the impact of ALMA funding decisions on the technical and scientific training of North American students and postdocs in sub/millimeter astronomy, since these are the people who will be using and *operating* ALMA 15 years from now. The ANASAC's concern should extend to the welfare of university sub/millimeter observatories, where technical training is concentrated. (3) For allocation of funds to *specific* development projects, we recommend that proposals from the community be solicited formally, and as broadly as possible in terms of scope. The aim here would be to foster involvement by the widest possible swath of the community (not just a favored few), and to stimulate creative, "bottom-up" thinking. To reconcile this goal with the existence of "top-down" efforts that are already widely recognized as potential development priorities (new receiver bands, subarrays, etc.) within a unified project-wide decisionmaking process, we offer the following set of guidelines as our tentative preference, recognizing that boundary conditions may still evolve as the Board finalizes policies concerning development efforts: + The JAO will issue regular (no more frequently than annual) calls for development proposals, analogous to calls for observing proposals. + A given solicitation may include a certain number of "top-down" items that have already been identified as priorities by the Board, the Executives, and/or the JAO. However, it will also always invite proposals for "bottom-up" projects initiated by the user community. + The Executives will define who within their respective communities is eligible to submit development proposals. (For North America, we recommend that units within NRAO, e.g., the NTC, and external university groups be eligible to compete on an equal footing.) + Development proposals may be submitted by consortia of eligible proposers that include multiple institutions from the same (e.g., NRAO + universities) or different (e.g., NRAO + ESO) ALMA partners. Cross-partner proposals will state the percent effort to be credited to each partner for cost accounting purposes. + Development proposals will be peer-reviewed and rated by a single international panel, coordinated by the JAO. The results of this evaluation will be used as input for the Board's final decision about which development projects each Executive will fund within its respective community. + Once approved by the Board, development projects (or pieces thereof, for cross-partner projects) will be managed by JAO. This structure can be summarized as "proposed by the users, reviewed by the community, approved by the Board, managed by the JAO". We hope that the peer review element would offer strong guidance to the Board, and thus minimize the perception in the community that choice projects are being "yanked away" due to politics (as was the complaint when the unilateral MMA project became the bilateral ALMA project). In addition, a broadly constituted review panel would inoculate internal NRAO development efforts against charges of cronyism. (4) Given the goal of broad participation and the fact that community involvement in large hardware and software efforts may be difficult to coordinate outside of already-established partnerships, we recommend that the solicitations for ALMA development proposals list areas of possible interest that are accessible to scientists both inside and outside university radio observatories. Our own (non-exclusive) list includes + generating/refining line lists + generating/refining calibrator lists + procuring large catalogs of continuum sources in categories of scientific interest (e.g., conduct the sub/millimeter bolometer array equivalent of the Spitzer First Look Survey) + testing schemes for dynamical scheduling + writing user-friendly tools for radiative transfer + developing and testing new algorithms for calibration or imaging + prototyping new tools to monitor submillimeter observing conditions and perform water vapor radiometry + prototyping new receiver designs (5) We recommend that the NAASC consider integrating faculty on sabbatical into the "turno-to-Chile" system, provided they already have experience relevant to ALMA operations. Especially during early operations phases, such external participation will require significant time commitments in order to minimize the burden on other members of the operations team (i.e., "tourist mode" participation is to be avoided). Volunteers for this arrangement would receive whatever support is appropriate and customary for faculty on sabbatical at NRAO. (6) We recommend that North American EPO efforts for ALMA be oriented towards broad national audiences rather than focused at the locations of current NRAO sites. Possible strategies for achieving this goal are (a) Require that the NRAO EPO office develop ALMA-related educational modules that can be easily exported across the country (see, e.g., NASA's Radio JOVE project). (b) Directly solicit EPO proposals from community members (perhaps ultimately limited to successful ALMA proposers, as is the policy for several NASA missions). Funding would flow directly to the point of use, although this would be less efficient if universities were to charge overhead on it. Besides their intrinsic merit, geographically distributed EPO activities would help address the "no senator from Chile" problem ALMA faces in attracting congressional support. (7) We can envision several models for student involvement in ALMA with both educational and development benefits, several of which can be accomodated within the structure of existing NRAO programs: (a) Allow for substantial (1-6 month) visits to the NAASC by Ph.D. students whose thesis projects are primarily based at their home institutions. These visits would strengthen and broaden the base of (young) North American ALMA users; their number should be limited to avoid placing too heavy a supervision burden on NAASC scientists. (b) Exploit the framework of the current NRAO predoctoral program and bring Ph.D. students to the NAASC for two years to work on specific, ALMA-related thesis projects. (c) Pay NRAO predocs to spend two years in residence at one of the university sub/millimeter observatories, subject to the agreement of the associated department, to work on a thesis relevant to ALMA development (as distinct from ALMA science). (d) Encourage ALMA-related REU programs. (8) We recommend that the NAASC consider rotating the locations of millimeter interferometry summer schools among (tentatively) Charlottesville, Bishop/Big Pine, and Cambridge, in order to give students more direct contact with the university sub/millimeter arrays. These summer schools could be held in alternate years with respect to the VLA summer school; CARMA and SMA-based summer schools could be run by contract with the respective observatories.