The High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) unanimously endorsed the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) report when it was released on 22 May. Now the US particle-physics community hopes that NSF and the Department of Energy, the funding agencies that requested the 10-year prioritization strategy, can use the report to help stanch the decline in funding the field has suffered in recent years.
Jim Siegrist, associate director of the DOE Office of Science, says the agency “is very pleased with the report. It provides an executable plan for high-energy physics in the US in a global context just as requested.” And, he says, it “will affect the details of the execution of our [fiscal year] 2015 budget once appropriated and the formulation of our FY 2016 budget.” The president’s FY 2015 request for high-energy physics is down 6.6% from the previous year. The P5 considered three funding scenarios for...
