Dear all,
Jeremy Love reached out to me for a meeting to talk about TAC-HEP. He mentioned that he really liked our detailed progress report and very much appreciated our efforts to recruit students midway through the academic year. That said, he informed me that due to a mis-understanding at his end, he would get less money than he expected for Year 2. And hence he would give us 1 student less worth of funds i.e. reduce our overall budget by ~55K for Year 2. Given the balance that we have (and he noted one student less at Princeton), he was hoping that we would manage. If not, then he would try to figure something out.
Given our current situation, I could not disagree i.e. we can manage in Year 2 given our leftover funds. I did tell him that we were actively recruiting and hence would request the originally allocated funds in Year 3. He agreed.
I then brought up a few other things:
1) Travel: we have limited funds for travel, especially for non-students. He mentioned that we could apply for conference support ($5-10K level) if needed and he would support it. He then sent me information about it that I will forward next.
2) He encouraged our students to apply for the SCGSR program and mentioned that it could be used to stretch out support for the student e.g. 1 year of TAC-HEP, 1 year of SCGSR and 1 year of TAC-HEP. Specifically, the student does not need to be part of TAC-HEP for two consecutive years. In particular, it appears that there is an eligibility condition associated with SCGSR (https://science.osti.gov/wdts/scgsr/Eligibility) that we should pay attention to: if a student has worked at a DOE lab (i.e. based there) for more than 3 months, they are not eligible for SCGSR!
3) I brought up my concern with the requirement of US citizenship/LPR status for our traineeship program. He appreciates this and in fact mentioned that the accelerator traineeship program had also raised this issue. He said that he would follow up regarding it (but I wouldn't hold my breath for any changes). He did mention that many of these rules were set up during the previous administration and until somebody changes them, they stay in effect. I told him that the RENEW program (also DOE) does not have this requirement. He was pleasantly surprised - this is likely the case cause it's a new initiative.
4) He again emphasized that he was really happy with what we have achieved so far and was also happy to hear that we were talking with the other traineeship programs.
5) Jeremy said that he would at some point also follow up with the lab people to hear about their experience.
Given (5), I think it's important that we work on our lab connections and perhaps try and get as many of them as possible to our summer program.
Best,
Tulika