Welcome & Introductions

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Rupak Mahapatra, for the organizing group

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Gianpaolo Carosi (LLNL) , Rupak Mahapatra (Texas A&M University) , Michael Mooney (Colorado State University), Kazuhiro Terro (SLAC), Faya Wang (SLAC), Peter Winter (ANL), Tong Zhou (LBL)

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HEP Early Career Award Network

DOE ECA Mentoring Workshop March 14, 2024

Background and history

• Currently there have been 158 HEP Early Career Awardees from the beginning of the program in FY 2010
• 56 at National Laboratories & 92 at Universities

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• The mission of the High Energy Physics (HEP) Early Career Award Network (ECAN) is to organize past and present awardees to make a strong, beneficial impact to the overall DOE HEP program.

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• We do this by connecting awardees from all areas of HEP science and technology research, by providing networking and career development resources, and by attracting, inspiring, and supporting exceptional STEM talent.

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Background and history

• This network was first suggested by Program Manager Dr. Alan Stone in 2019 in order to provide a supported resource to connect, collaborate and amplify efforts of Early Career Awardees and to provide more uniform engagement with the broader HEP community and other stakeholders (NSF, NASA, other Office of Science programs).
• Several objectives were proposed:
• Driven by a sub-group of the community
• HEP provides some seed funding to get started
• Enable members to have greater role in community planning (P5)
• Develop a formal structure
• Develop competitive and/or bridge funding for post-docs and grad students
• Expand network to adjacent programs (NP, BER, BES, ASCR, etc)
• BES recently started a similar effort in Early Career (not just awardees) network

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Background and history

• The first virtual meeting was held in Oct 2020, to brainstorm what such a ECAN program might look like. This led to a ½ day workshop in March 21, 2021
• https://indico.fnal.gov/event/48127/
• Also organized through SLACK Channel: http://hep-eca-alumninetwork.slack.com

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• First in-person workshop took place June 8-9 at Texas A&M: https://indico.slac.stanford.edu/event/7978/timetable/?view=standard
• Second in-person workshop being planned at the DPF May meeting in Pittsburgh
• The plan is to pursue ECAN activities in the following areas:
• Scientific Collaboration – Lightning talks by various ECAN members presenting their current research and areas in which cross-frontier collaboration could be useful. 3 meetings held so far
• Mentoring and Career Development – This is the first DOE ECAN meeting geared towards providing good ideas and enable direct mentoring to ECA applicants
• Project Management
• DEI and Community Outreach

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HEP Research Subprograms

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https://science.osti.gov/hep/Research

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The FOA may list these differently. Some research (such as CEνNS and 0ν2β may overlap with DOE NP)

Snapshot from the FOAs

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Accelerator Stewardship and ARDAP are different offices in the SC, with the latter focusing on industry partnership

ECA FOA

Comparative Review FOA – Kilgore HEP Review

Mission-aligned Proposal

• DOE is a Mission Driven Agency
• Your proposed research must align with one of the mission areas and the priorities within those areas.
• Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Biological and Environmental Research (BER), Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES), High Energy Physics (HEP), and Nuclear Physics (NP). You can find more information: https://science.osti.gov/early-career

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• Big Impact - Make sure you are not providing an incremental/evolutionary solution to a problem. You must yourself be convinced that the problem is a big problem worth solving that could have a large scientific impact

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• Attend DOE PI Meetings: https://web.cvent.com/event/dc4ad83b-1a44-4699-838a-a6d5aa2ba707/websitePage:e66aa057-84cb-4a74-9c11-c7d6038b7fa2

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Make it easy to find how you address these (the rubric)

1. Scientific and/or Technical Merit of the Project �What is the scientific innovation of proposed research?  How does the proposed research compare with other research in its field, both in terms of scientific and/or technical merit and originality?  How might the results of the proposed research impact the direction, progress, and thinking in relevant scientific fields of research?  What is the likelihood of achieving influential results?  Is the Data Management Plan suitable for the proposed research and to what extent does it support the validation of research results?

2. Appropriateness of the Proposed Method or Approach �Does the proposed research employ innovative concepts or methods? How logical and feasible are the research approaches?  Are the conceptual framework, methods, and analyses well justified, adequately developed, and likely to lead to scientifically valid conclusions? Does the applicant recognize significant potential problems and consider alternative strategies?

3. Competency of Applicant's Personnel and Adequacy of Proposed Resources 

Does the proposed work take advantage of unique facilities and capabilities? What are the past performance and potential of the Principal Investigator (PI)?  How well qualified is the research team to carry out the proposed research?  Are the research environment and facilities adequate for performing the research?

4. Reasonableness and Appropriateness of the Proposed Budget 

Are the proposed budget and staffing levels adequate to carry out the proposed research?  Is the budget reasonable and appropriate for the scope?

5. Relevance to the Mission of the Specific Program (e.g., ASCR, BER, BES, FES, HEP, or NP) to which the Application is Submitted 

�How does the proposed research contribute to the mission of the program in which the application is being evaluated?

6. Potential for Leadership within the Scientific Community 

Scientific leadership can be defined very broadly and can include direct research contributions.  How has the PI demonstrated the potential for scientific leadership and creative vision?  How has the PI been recognized as a leader?

7. Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research Plans

Promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in research projects?

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General Proposal Review Process for ECA

• Mail-in reviews carried out first
• Panel reviews done in each frontier
• Super Panel review done across the entire HEP
• Make sure your proposal is understandable to experts outside of your frontier

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• Mail-in review process
• Make sure to address each of the review criteria
• If this is your second or third time, incorporate feedback from previous attempts and include work done since then

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Panel Review Process

• Impact?
• Low-impact vs high-impact proposals, e.f. My upgraded detector can provide a 10% improvement in threshold vs it can open an entirely new regime by implementing superconducting sensors. Is it evolutionary or revolutionary?
• Relevance?
• Mission aligned? I am working on LIGO (NSF-funded). It is not aligned with HEP or P5.
• Highly aligned would be a Detector R&D proposal addressing multiple Basic Research Needs
• Probability of success?
• High-risk, high-reward proposal that is still workable within the period of performance with clearly defined deliverables that stand by themselves. It is still fine not to achieve everything you propose, but it can provide significant contributions to the frontier through the proposed research.
• Achievable in time frame?
• Must fit within the 5-year period and must not entirely depend on the outcome of another project, such as proposing to implement new analysis techniques for the SuperLHC data.
• Achievable with resources requested?
• Validate your plan with senior colleagues to ensure the proposed work is doable with the resources you have/requesting
• Uniqueness (would the research happen anyway, and should it?)
• Clearly spell out why you are the best person to do this and why it should be done. If this is something that would be done anyway as part of a large collaborative work (such as detector calibration), why should this be an ECA?

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Lessons Learned – Advice from a few ECAN Members

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Carter Hall (Maryland) – Cosmic Frontier 2011

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Early Career proposals are different

For a conventional research proposal, the question is:

• What science do I want to accomplish in the next three years?
• What resources will be required?
• Is that realistic?
• If no, iterate on (1) and (2), and/or consider other funding opportunities.

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• For an Early Career award, the question is:
• What science could I accomplish in five years given $150k/year (university) or $500k/year (lab)? Five years is a long time; so the proposal should be ambitious.
• The EC funding level is steady, but relatively modest. So the proposal cannot be too ambitious.
• A central problem to be solved when devising the EC proposal is how to balance these two competing demands.

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Carter Hall (Maryland) – Cosmic Frontier 2011

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Unsuccessful Attempts

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High-impact writing

Carter Hall - Crafting an (experimental) Early Career proposal�

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• Does the proposal align with and support an existing HEP priority project or experiment?
• Does it include one or more new ideas which, if successfully developed, would augment, improve, or extend the baseline project or experiment or subfield?
• Did the new idea(s) originate with the PI?
• Do the new idea(s) address an important scientific or technical issue of the project or experiment or subfield?
• Do the new ideas build upon each other? Are they coherent?
• Has preliminary work been done? Do the preliminary results support the plausibility of the new ideas?

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• Is it plausible that the proposed work can be carried out in five years within the resources available through the Early Career program?
• Does the proposal take advantage of local resources and expertise?
• Is the proposal schedule in harmony with the schedule of the larger project or experiment?
• Does the PI appear to be uniquely positioned to carry out the proposed activities?

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Sarah Demers (Yale) – Energy Frontier 2011

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• Propose a plan that YOU can carry out that takes advantage of resources that YOU have

• Make sure that it isn’t just one thing (physics, software, hardware, …)

• It needs to be ambitious but realistic, with clear discussion of risks and potential mitigations

• You need a 5-year plan, not a relabeled 3-year plan from a standard proposal call

• Organization is critical. Use every tool in your toolbox (tables, charts, headings…)

• The text should be typo-free (don’t panic over one or two) and clear

Sarah Demers (Yale) – Energy Frontier 2011

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Brendan Casey (Fermilab) – Intensity Frontier 2012

• First submission for 2010: mostly hardware based

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• Reviewer: “Why would I trust this PI to do an ultra precision measurement like g-2 if he can’t even figure out how to run a spell checker?”

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• Second submission for 2011: Muon EDM based (i.e. a stand-alone parasitic measurement separate from the g-2 measurement)

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• Reviewer: “Why would I give $2.5M to do a poor muon EDM measurement when $2.5M would make an enormous difference in a table-top electron EDM measurement?”

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• Third submission for 2012: Figured out how the tracker enables the main g-2 measurement. ECA physics case = entire g-2 physics case

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• Success

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Lesson 3: Poor packaging is sufficient to kill a good idea

Lesson 4: Your ECA’s physics case has to be at least as strong as your experiment’s physics case

Our Mentoring Plan

• Provide answers to questions
• Matchmaking
• Most National Labs and some Universities have Proposal Development Offices that provide help for most aspects of an ECA application
• If not available or if more help is needed, contact us
• Alan Stone (HEP budgeting) is willing to provide feedback
• Primary areas of help envisioned
• Idea development (planning for future proposals)
• Technical discussions on elements in an existing proposal
• Proposal review as a red team (proposal almost final)
• If involved deeply in a proposal development, it may potentially become a COI when on a review panel

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