The University of New Mexico (UNM) has announced that the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5), comprising scientists from various countries and international partners, has submitted its recommendations to U.S. funding agencies regarding particle physics research projects for the upcoming decade. The global panel, consisting of approximately 30 scientists, was responsible for shaping these recommendations.
Funding agencies such as the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) convene a panel every decade to establish funding priorities and areas of focus for the subsequent ten years. This year-long process involves gathering input from the scientific community and selecting particle physics projects to propose to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP). According to a press release by UNM, Assistant Professor Francis-Yan Cyr-Racine participated in the P5, while Professor Sally Seidel from UNM led the panel tasked with accepting the report.
Cyr-Racine stated, "This was a difficult exercise. We had to make hard choices. We took all this input from the community and hopefully processed it into a coherent report. It was a time-consuming process, and it took a lot of work to make sure that we convey the right message."
He further shared his personal experience saying, "I've learned a lot during this process. For someone at my career stage, this was a very formative experience. I got to learn things about particle accelerators, detectors, and cutting-edge technology, topics that I didn’t know a lot about because that's not what I do on a daily basis." Cyr-Racine added that his involvement in P5 has broadened his research horizons as it sparked many ideas for new projects.
The P5 operates as a subpanel within HEPAP which provides advisory guidance to the Federal Government concerning both experimental and theoretical research in high-energy physics (HEP), according to information available on DOE's HEPAP webpage.
