Dear Potential DUSEL Enthusiast,

As you may know, plans to establish a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory are accelerating. A site has been selected at Homestake, design activities are well underway, and plans are evolving to design an initial suite of experiments (ISEs) which will be housed in the facility. We anticipate that DUSEL will be one of the major scientific investments made by our country in the next decade.  Commensurate with this importance, plans are in hand to shape the suite of ISEs to be included in the facility, and we invite your participation in this important activity.

The first step in this path to design the ISEs is a workshop in Lead, SD, April 20-26, 2008 [http://www.lbl.gov/nsd /homestake/Workshops.html]. This workshop will launch an effort to develop comprehensive design plans for the ISEs and will be a focused workshop to assemble plans and to develop proposals for the as yet undefined suite of ISEs and in the gathering of perishable background data. This open forum is arranged in a series of non-exhaustive working groups in the areas of physics and cosmology and biology-geosciences- engineering [http://www.lb l.gov/nsd/homestake/aprilworkinggroups.html], and we enthusiastically invite your participation.  Travel assistance funding is available.  Please see attached Travel Request and Instructions form.

The ultimate goal of these working groups is to develop a credible plan for a set of experiments to be included in the comprehensive MREFC proposal (NSF 07-38, http://www.nsf.gov/pub s/2007/nsf0738/nsf0738.pdf) to build and commission a DUSEL. The MREFC proposal will be submitted in December 2009 and will include a complete justification of the science and a reasoned definition for feasibility of construction and execution.

In preparation for this activity, we encourage you to contact relevant group leaders
[http://www.lbl.gov/nsd/homestake/aprilworkinggroups.html] with your interests
and ideas, or to contact the undersigned for more information.

Steve Elliott (elliotts@lanl.gov),
Derek Elsworth (elsworth@psu.edu),
Larry Murdoch (lmurdoc@clemson.edu),
Tullis Onstott (tullis@Princeton.EDU),
Hank Sobel (hsobel@uci.edu)

For the DUSEL Experiment Development Committee     

Pre-workshop:       
Invite proponents, solicit initial input, plan mini-symposium agenda  [March 10th]
Complete initial agenda and one-page white paper [April 1st]
Lead ISE Workshop:   
Craft ISE module: objectives, approach, expected results [April 20]
Present strawman outline at close, plan proposal [April 22]
NSF S-4 Proposal:   
Submit proposal for initial design of component ISE [June 30th]
S-4 funding available from NSF [expected Oct]
Grantees Meeting:   
Summary of design progress [Dec AGU]

Preliminary Design proposals due [May]
Grantees Meeting, Final report on ISE design for incorporation into CDR/MREFC  [May AGU]
Initial Suite of Experiments announced [July]
MREFC,  Assembly of MREFC and submission for funding [December]

ISEs begin