DOE Cosmic Frontier

• Demographics Committee member: Prisca Cushman
• Contacts: Michael Cooke (main contact), Kathy Turner, John Boger

• Summary (Dec 2014) of the Aug2014 PI meeting talks (see resources) and my reviewer experience.

DOE HEP program model

• Using community-driven strategic planning & reviews, we develop and support a specific portfolio of selected facilities & experiments to enable significant advances in specific science areas (i.e. we select specific projects/facilities to build)
• Lab environment & infrastructure with a variety of resources needed to design, build, and operate selected facilities & projects
• For the selected projects/facilities in our program, we support a science collaboration in all stages, leading to the best possible science results
• Partnerships as needed to leverage additional science and expertise (e.g. use other agency’s facilities)

In developing the program, we follow the PASAG/P5 criteria: Make contributions to select, high impact experiments:

• That directly address HEP science goals
• That will make a significant, visible or leadership contribution
• For which the HEP community contributions or expertise is needed – instrumentation, collaborations, analysis techniques etc.

HEP-style Collaborations, Support

• HEP provides long-term support for our responsibilities in designing, building and operating projects to achieve significant advances in science.
• The HEP community’s model and the HEP program’s support is traditionally for teams of scientists to participate in all phases of an experiment as part of an HEP-style collaboration.
• The collaboration leads the design, R&D, Fabrication, Operations, & Data Analysis phases.
• Science planning is expected throughout all phases to end up with coordinated data analysis by a collaboration (e.g. one precision result rather than 100 independent results)
• Researchers typically have long-term commitments, and responsibilities on the experiments/projects, in addition to their science planning and analysis efforts.
• For this model to work, it requires people to receive stable, long-term support; otherwise projects would not be able to count on them to deliver their responsibilities.

The HEP community’s research model and expectations described above is reflected in the proposal review process.

Research program priorities:

• Priority is to support efforts on projects/experiments in HEP program, i.e. where HEP has responsibilities.
• Support HEP-model science collaboration to carry out the experiment in all phases
• Support research efforts directly in line with our project priorities and science goals (e.g. HEP supports dark energy studies on experiments with broader science goals).

Need to make sure that our experiments are adequately supported before supporting or adding to research efforts for other programs. However, some funding is available for development of ideas for new projects that are aligned with the science drivers. Research efforts on projects that are aligned with HEP science drivers, but which don’t have HEP participation, will also be considered, taking into account the above and based on funding availability.

Typical researcher’s program:

• HEP “buys” full research time of the faculty member on their overall program by providing summer salary and group support.
• The typical researcher program may include service work on an experiment, participation in design, R&D, fabrication, operations on a project/experiment, science planning and analysis, and may include a plan of efforts on currently operating as well as planning for future projects.
• Typically, a researcher is not funded for one particular study or effort here and there.
• The typical researcher has specific long-term commitments & responsibilities for our projects/experiments, which may include analyzing data with one experiment while working on the design or fabrication of the next one.

HEP is starting to see a few people that are submitting more than 1 proposal for 2 different efforts on the same experiment and is assumed to be a way to get around the page limit. It will be made clear that this isn't helpful in the future for next year's FOA. If everybody starts doing this, it would mean lots more time spent writing proposals, multiple proposals, and a heavier load for review panels, instead of concentrating on research.

People working traditionally in the “astronomy” mode that want to get supported by HEP have been learning how to work in the HEP collaboration model over the past few years and some have gotten supported.

Cosmic Frontier (CF) experimental research program support is provided for university (and other non-DOE-lab institutions) grants and also for lab research groups.

Universities apply through Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA). HEP has subprograms with research funding lines in Cosmic Frontier, Energy Frontier, Intensity Frontier, Theory, and Advanced Detector R&D. A successful proposal typically receives a 3-year grant.

Research efforts are supported in the first 2 FOA’s below; a small amount of research support may also be available in the 3rd one.

• 1. Research Opportunities in HEP (“Comparative Review”)
  • Annual solicitation that is the funding vehicle for HEP research support
  • Proposals due a specific date
  • We hold an annual review of these proposals
  • Most of our university research support is held for this.
  • Can submit a proposal from an individual or group of PI’s in one or more of our subprograms (Cosmic Frontier, Energy Frontier, Theory, etc)
  • The research funding supports faculty PI’s, research scientists, postdoc, graduate student, & their expenses; also supports small technical, engineering, equipment, for their efforts in their lab
• 2. Office of Science Early Career Awards
  • Annual competition for young investigators
    • PI must be within 10 years of Ph.D., 3 tries
    • $750k over a 5 year grant
• 3. Office of Science Continuing Solicitation (General FOA)
  • No deadline; can apply anytime during the year.
  • Types of grants/efforts supported - Project R&D, small experiments (fab, operations), conferences, and research (though not much funding is available for research).

Theory efforts should be submitted to the Theory program funding line. However, the CF program does support theory/simulations/phenomenology/computational efforts that are in direct support of our experiments (e.g. the person is a collaborator and doing specific studies on the experiment, thereby giving up their autonomy).

Any significant operations and/or project-related activities should be submitted to the general FOA. This includes Engineering, Technicians, computer programming, other project/related personnel support, top-level project management, M&S, major items of equipment, consumables. If a lab leads the project, then our funds would go there and the lab would subcontract as needed.

Peer reviews and program planning reflect the HEP community’s tradition of long term roles and responsibilities on an experiment/project as part of a collaboration.

Some of the considerations taken into account by comparative grants review panels include:

• Is the activity in direct support of our science/experiment and priorities?
  • For experiments with broad science program, is the effort are needed to support OHEP science interests? - Need to ensure that we are concentrating on the most important efforts for HEP program (e.g. dark energy on multi-use facility).
• What are the priority efforts needed now for a particular experiment?
• What is the experience, responsibilities and commitment (% time) of the researcher? Will they have time to make significant contribution?
• Are people supporting the collaboration carrying out the project/experiment?
• Will they work in the “HEP model” by making significant, continuous contributions to the experiment, in addition to their own data analysis?
  • Note: Funding isn’t optimized by funding small fractions of lots of different people that aren’t making large or continuous contributions to the experiment, in addition to their own data analysis.

• Labs submit FWP’s (Field Work Proposals) annual for continuation of their program as well as at other times for supplemental/new efforts. Lab researchers can also apply for an Early Career award.

• Lab researchers typically work in the HEP collaboration model as described above.

• Comparative reviews of all our labs’ programs in Cosmic Frontier are held every 3 years.

• Who is writing the proposals? Please let me know which of these data are available, without violating privacy rules.
  • PI position: (postdoc, professor, tenured, etc)
  • Gender, race/ethnicity
  • geographical location,
  • size, type (and research tier?) of institution
  • Other?
• How many proposals submitted by same PI - broken down by PI category above
• Number of senior researchers on proposal per year - broken down by the PI categories above
• Total funding awarded -same breakdown
• Compare success rates of different sorts of proposals
  • per PI category as above
  • per number of senior researchers on the proposal
  • per number of proposals submitted in the last 5 years
  • per which type of proposal (indexed by RFP? or by topic?)
• Years between successful proposals for each PI (does each renewal count as a “successful proposal”?)- broken down by the PI categories
• Ratio of successful to unsuccessful proposals per PI - broken down by the PI categoris
• Same ratio, but as an overall success rate per RFP or topic - which categories make sense here?
• Do younger researchers rise through the ranks (are researcher on proposal and then become PI later)?
  • Number of years between first appearance as senior researcher on a proposal to becoming PI
  • Number of senior researchers (above postdoc) that are supported on proposal soft money overall
  • Same as above, but per proposal, per geographical place, per gender/race/ethnicity

• How much of the science support comes through missions or other stable sources relative to competed 3-year proposals?
• What fraction of the money for competed research is distributed to various types of institution (labs, universities, centers, industry)?

• How many grants of typical size are required to support an individual investigator?
• How many sources of support does the typical investigator (PI, CoI, student) rely upon?
• How many investigators/students participate in the average proposal?

• How many awards have gone to first-time PIs?
• How much of the typical award supports the PI? CoIs? Students?
• What is the age (in career) distribution of PIs? Proposers?
• What is the age (in career) distribution of the relevant community?

• How many proposals have been reviewed annually for the last 10 years?
• How many proposals have been selected annually for the last 10 year?
• How much money has been awarded annually in the last 10 years for competed research grants?
• What fraction of the total program budget each year has gone to support competed grants?

• Click on Resources
• P5 (2014) Criteria used in developing the program
• PASAG (2009) Criteria used in developing the program