Visiting Committee appointed to advise on IRAM's long-term Future

Under Paul VandenBout as Chairman, a Visiting Committee appointed by the IRAM Executive Council has started its work to advise on IRAM's long-term future. In addition to the Chaiman, the following members have accepted to serve on this evaluation panel: Chris Carilli, Richard Hills, Malcolm Longair, Anneila Sargent, and Malcolm Walmsley.

The committee has been given the following mandate:

1.

to evaluate the international standing, productivity and competitiveness of the IRAM facilities and the science carried out with them,

2.

to advise and comment on IRAM's plans and priorities for its mid-term development plan,

3.

to advise on the role of IRAM in the ALMA era, considering the 10 years road map and the institutional boundary conditions,

4.

to comment on the role and competitiveness of the IRAM telescopes in the ALMA era beyond 2012.

In a series of meetings and telecons, and the exchange of written material, the committee will prepare its report by the fall of 2004.

As an input to this process, IRAM will try to compile feedback from the current users of the IRAM Observatories about questions like how much the instrumentation, the observing modes, the software, and the data reduction support that are offered are optimised for their respective scientific projects, and what future instrumentation/observing modes the users would like to see. We will use the e-mail distribution list of the Newsletter to make this inquiry.

Michael GREWING