Plans will be developed to phase in research at the ALS, becoming more robust as the COVID-19 timeline plays out. In the meantime, the ALS User Office database is tracking the lost beamtime for each proposal. Users can see this information by viewing their proposals in ALSHub and noting the discrepancy between allocated and scheduled beamtime.
Meanwhile, the ALS General User Proposal cycle has seen the processing and review of 258 new proposals, plus 501 beamtime requests for the 2020-2 August–December operating cycle. The Proposal Study Panel (PSP) will meet on May 15-20 in a series of virtual meetings to oversee and finalize the scoring of General User Proposals and to make recommendations to the ALS Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) on Approved Program applications. Normally the PSP meeting is rapidly followed by beamtime allocations. This year, the User Office will take a little extra time to put together allocation lists for each beamline that reflect beamtime lost in the 2020-1 cycle, in addition to the usual information including proposal scores. Notification of results to users will also likely be delayed while the ALS confirms plans for user operations in the 2020-2 cycle.
Staff in the User Office are available throughout this process to answer user queries, and help you. Do not hesitate to contact us for advice. If there is no User Agreement in place, please contact User Office staff as soon as possible.