2nd Joint Community Planning Workshop for Magnetic Fusion Energy and Fusion Materials & Technology

Announcement

The second Joint MFE and FM&T Community Workshop will be held at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville on November 18-22. The intent of this workshop is to resolve outstanding programmatic questions and to converge on a strategic plan for MFE and FM&T.

Registration and Hotel information

https://utconferences.eventsair.com/mfefmt

Road to Knoxville

In order to generate consensus around a strategic plan for MFE & FM&T it is critical that the process moves beyond single initiatives (often with limited scope) and towards the formation of more coherent elements (groups of initiatives) that can address our identified gaps. As a result, the tasks that will take place between now and Knoxville are focused largely on the development of more coherent parts of an eventual strategic plan.

Advocacy Groups should continue to provide input in the form of new and consolidated initiative proposals and informational white papers. This input will be accepted until September 27. We particularly seek consolidated initiatives that generalize or reconcile several related initiatives, with the aim of developing broader Strategic Elements for the Strategic Plan. Advocates are also encouraged to revise existing initiatives submitted before the Madison workshop based on Expert Group feedback.

By August 31, Expert Groups will post their evaluations of initiative proposals that were submitted by July 1 (evaluations are now available here). After that, Expert Groups will continue to evaluate initiatives, although they may not produce formal feedback for Advocates. Expert Groups may continue to evaluate and review initiative proposals up until (but not during) Knoxville. Advocacy Groups are encouraged to participate in Expert Group discussions.

Expert Groups will be asked to identify Strategic Elements based on the initiatives that have been proposed as input. This will permit community discussion of what the appropriate Strategic Elements should be. Additionally, Expert Groups will be asked to propose placeholder initiatives to address gaps not addressed by initiatives submitted by Advocacy Groups. These Strategic Elements and placeholder initiatives should be communicated to the MFE / FM&T Program Committee by October 11.

After October 11, the MFE / FM&T Program Committee will use the output from the Expert Groups and will begin to produce a draft strategic plan (or plans) for consideration and debate at the Knoxville Workshop. It is important to note that this plan will serve as the starting point for discussion at Knoxville. Text from these plans will be shared with Expert Groups before the Knoxville workshop.

We plan on holding a series of Webinars leading up to the Knoxville workshop to disseminate information and focus on specific aspects of the strategic planning process. We also expect to hold focus group discussions to ensure that all stakeholders feel adequately represented in this process and that their concerns are being addressed.

The Draft Strategic Plan (Download pdf copy)

The DPP-CPP Program Committee has assembled a Draft Strategic Plan. This document is based on the input provided to the PC by the Expert Groups, which in turn drew upon the initiatives submitted by Advocacy Groups.

The Draft Strategic Plan is intended to be a starting point for discussion at Knoxville. We do not claim that this document represents a consensus view at this point. Many details provided by the Expert Groups are also omitted at this stage in order to focus on reaching consensus around the high-level objectives and recommendations.

During the week before Knoxville, Expert Groups will hold meetings to comment on whether the recommendations in the Draft Strategic Plan are consistent with the input provided to the PC from the Expert Groups. If you would like to provide feedback on this Plan during this week, please do so through Expert Group discussions.

At Knoxville, the Program Committee will give presentations on the elements of this plan, and we will attempt to resolve contentious issues and build consensus through group discussions.

A "heavy" version of the Draft Strategic Plan is provided at the end of this description for additional details and context under the recommendations. This "heavy" version only adds details to the plan posted on Nov 11th and does not yet take community or expert group feedback into account. Improvements to the plan based on community and expert group feedback will occur during and after Knoxville. Download the heavy version here. Additional supplemental information, referenced as Appendices in the "heavy" document, can be found here.

Agenda

NOTE: Knoxville is in the eastern time zone.

The program for the joint MFE / FM&T community planning workshop can be found in the embedded document below.

Click on agenda below to open into a new page.

Please be aware that speakers, titles, and times may be subject to change.