Funding of delegates elected by the board 

Funding of travel for IUPAP(C4,C11) (nominated by KVA), IPPOG,  ECFA and ACCU delegates is generally covered by the delegates themselves (faculty funds or grants). 

For IPPOG (= international particle physics outreach group), there is also a fee of ~30000 SEK/year to be part of the organization, and that money is not available anymore starting from 2021. 

Caterina Doglioni brought this up at the Chairs of Boards meeting in March, but no immediate solution.  

Riccardo Catena wrote to Richard Brenner for an update on interactions with VR, and received a reply that there is little progress due to COVID but is more hopeful that ECFA can be covered while IPPOG will be harder to cover.

Christian Ohm discussed with Stockholm/KTH and brought up that the RFI (part of VR) secretary requested a report about financial return, industry involvement, and education opportunities related to CERN activities. Matthias Hamberg at VR agreed to put this together, and this should include outreach activities and IPPOG. This was in Dec, no update since January.  

Christian Ohm also brought up that VR now has a communications person (Kristina Careborg) who could work to solve this. Jonas Strandberg discussed with her a few months ago, but there was no obvious solution.

It was agreed that the most urgent item for this year is to find a way to cover the IPPOG fee. 

Action items for the Board members: 

• Elin Bergeas Kuutmann checks with Richard Brenner if the report by VR (Matthias Hamberg) is still ongoing or has concluded. If still ongoing, we can contact M. Hamberg as a board can try and see if there is sufficient emphasis on our outreach activities, which reach many high-school students. In any case, keep LHCK consortium in the loop. 

• We could try to contact Kristina Careborg to see if there can be grants for communication, joined for both particle and astroparticle physics. Supporting statements from international entities we’re part of could be sought prior to that:

  • David Marsh will have a chat with Gianfranco Bertone (EuCAPT) on this matter, even though EuCAPT does not have an outreach component it could benefit from efforts in this direction and could write a statement of support. 

  • Caterina Doglioni asks Teresa Montaruli (APPEC president) if they would be interested in making an explicit statement on astroparticle physics and outreach. 

Partikeldagarna in Uppsala

After looking together at the calendar of dates where other collaboration meetings are happening, we converged on the dates on the 23-24 of November (approved and announced by Uppsala members of the board). 

Nordic Physics Days

Decision not to proceed with soliciting/organizing) abstracts unless the event was happening for sure. Caterina Doglioni checked with organizers, and the situation is still uncertain, so we will not take any action as a Board. 

Spaatind

Still early to proceed, but it would be good to find a named responsible to organize this (can be within or outside the board, board members will ask around their institutes). To be brought up again next time. 

Opening up Zoom seminars

We decided it would be interesting to advertise our “virtual” institute particle and astroparticle seminars through the Elpasfysik mailing list in a digest every week or two (depending on how many seminars are advertised).  We would make it clear that there is no expectation of attendance, but this is a way to increase the cross-talk. Prerequisites:

• Check with the speaker and organizer(s) that this is ok and that they are prepared for an audience beyond their hosts

• Make sure link doesn’t go out of the mailing list (not on webpages)

• Have password anyway (can be embedded in the link)

→ pilot run with Gregor Kasiezska’s seminar in Uppsala.