Message From the President
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Dear colleagues:
Here it is, another electronic survey.
As all of you, I am also very familiar with the semi-automatic move towards the computer’s Delete key. However, as the President of the Canadian Institute for Synchrotron Radiation (CISR), I would urge you to suppress this “conditioned reflex” and take the few minutes necessary to answer the questions and submit your information, opinions and suggestions to Stefan Idziak, the Secretary of the CISR, who will collate the answers and present the results at our Annual Meeting, which this year again will take place in connection with the Canadian Light Source’s Annual Users’ Meeting in Saskatoon in June (for details, see the “new and improved” CISR website at http://www.cisr.ca).
The survey can be found at http://www.cisr.ca/survey/survey.html . To reduce spam you must log into the survey. Please email Stefan Idziak (idziak@uwaterloo.ca) to get your login and password.
Although CISR was the original driver pushing for a Canadian synchrotron its goal continues to be the representation of all users of synchrotron radiation in Canada; the ones already collecting data or eagerly awaiting their first beamtime at the CLS as well as those that cannot work there because specifications or time requirements cannot be met by a source that performs excellently but –unfortunately although unavoidably- is limited in its capacity.
At last years meeting, the Board, the Executive and the Members of CISR felt that reliable information was missing about the needs and, yes, the wishes of Canada’s synchrotron researchers, both in academia and in industry. It has taken some time but the attached survey will hopefully provide us with the background to more vigorously and finally even more successfully articulate the requirements of the community to the representatives of granting agencies as well as political committees.
If we have made mistakes in combining several email lists and you should receive multiple copies of this mail, please, keep in mind that we are no professional pollsters and accept my apology in advance.
With my best wishes,
Emil F. Pai
President
Canadian Institute for Synchrotron Radiation