Huib Jan van Langevelde outlines challenges for JIVE in 2012

2012 JIVE New Years Speech

Dear colleagues, I would like to start with best wishes for you and your families for the New Year. I wish it to be a fruitful and healthy 2012 for all of us.

Normally these New Year speeches divide up almost equally between the achievements of last year and the perspective of the New Year. But there is so much more in the future to discuss than in the past year, that we can choose between a lengthy speech and a reasonably short one focusing on 2012. So, although 2011 has been as excitingly successful as any past year, I would like to focus today on what 2012 will bring. In 2012 we at JIVE come to the end of another 5-year funding cycle. Every fifth year the international partners must decide on their commitment to fund JIVE for its central operational role in the EVN.

I think we are in good shape for this. Over the past years we have seen a healthy growth of the proposal pressure on the EVN, at the same time that we have in fact increased the amount of observing time by offering e-VLBI services. In this way the EVN is leading the world in innovating VLBI with real-time services and this allows our users to do VLBI observations in a very exciting way. Another innovation we are championing at JIVE is the observation of man-made spacecraft. Moreover, at JIVE we have the most ambitious correlator development programme to support future large-scale, global VLBI observations. We are already offering new capabilities with the software correlator that really has become a hit success in 2011. Moreover, we have good prospects to enhance the VLBI network with new European antennas (Sardinia Italy, but also Latvia and the UK). Beyond Europe we are still getting more long-baseline coverage from stations in the East (China, Russia). And there is the exciting possibility to start co-observing with the African array that starts to emerge in the South. From the VLBI science and operations perspective, I think we have done everything right to make sure we continue serving the community with first-class data.

However, even a perfect performance is not a sufficient condition for an easy decision on our continued funding. It also depends on developments in the world at large. The current European economic situation is triggering governments to focus on their short-term problems. Climate change or human development programmes move to the background, culture and science need to cut back or refocus. But I think that this climate may actually offer an opportunity to redefine the structure, scope and maybe even the mission of JIVE. In 2011 the JIVE board has come to accept my strategy to transform JIVE into a European Research Infrastructure. I will say more about this later. There have also been important developments in 2011 in radio astronomy with the establishment of the SKA Company. I hope that 2012 will be as constructive for radio astronomy and especially that the booming radio astronomy efforts in the Southern hemisphere come out of the SKA siting decision with a constructive sense of collaboration, just like what we carefully maintain in Europe.

In the same time frame, the JIVE partners will be starting their negotiations for a new Memorandum of Understanding. As in previous cycles, this will start with a review of JIVE. Our board has selected a fine panel of international experts and you may have already heard that this panel will visit here from 5-7 March. The JIVE management is of course increasingly busy with preparing for this. Amongst the material is for example an EVN/JIVE user questionnaire that we sent out last Thursday and that some of you in the audience, who are not JIVE staff, may have received.

As part of the review, we have to show our records on production correlation and user support, as well as the science output of the EVN and of our JIVE staff. Just as important is to demonstrate that we have a sound intermediate and long-term strategy. The first component of this is that we are making good progress with NEXPReS, for which we just completed the first year’s review and associated action items. The further development of e-VLBI as an integral part of the EVN operations has been central to strategy over the last few years. Another key in our plans has been to secure EVN access funds in RadioNet3; the programme formally started on January 1 and we also have important development programmes funded in user software and of course for UniBoard. An assessment of our strategic decision to go for an FPGA based correlator will also be implied in the review. We have started to prepare our presentation to the review panel on these activities. The way you JIVErs can help us the most is by demonstrating progress with your work in the coming months. And at the same time we also have to perform flawlessly in our on-going activities, notably the start-up and reporting in the RadioNet programmes, but also all the other externally funded projects.

As in the previous cycles, the review is the first step in establishing a funding base for the upcoming 5-year cycle. I think there is no question that across the JIVE partners there is a strong commitment towards VLBI and a sound trust that JIVE is giving the EVN a strong heart. But at the same time, something will need to change. With a combined budget that has been close to flat over the last 10 years from our partners and the EC access, the inevitably increasing costs of the JIVE core business is hardly covered any more. It is therefore urgent to make sure that more EVN partners understand that correlation and particularly the associated user support does not come for free.

I think that joining JIVE will become more attractive and more relevant when we make JIVE into a truly European entity. And since a couple of years this possibility exists in the form of European Research Infrastructure Consortium. Without changing the formal employment of the JIVE staff with NWO, it seems possible to discontinue JIVE as a foundation, and give it a truly European rooting. This construction has financial advantages and reduces the personal responsibility that directors have in the JIVE board. Most importantly it recognizes the EVN/JIVE as an important research infrastructure in future EC funding schemes. Because JIVE is supported by different international partners, each with different structures and different missions, it is a challenge to arrange this at the same time that we define the financial envelope of JIVE for the next 5 years, but the various bodies in the Netherlands, where the biggest share of JIVE funding is originating from, are feeling strongly about this.

One thing I do not look forward to is that I have to work on this, while outside my office the trees need to come down and the new wing of the building is under construction. On a personal level I have mixed feelings about cutting these trees. Obviously, this construction work will be a major disruption for all of us, but it is inevitable that ASTRON makes more room, and it will be fitting for the new JIVE to be in a new house. Besides the new office space, I am particularly keen to see better facilities for meetings and colloquia, but also coffee breaks and lunches. I value very much that ASTRON and JIVE have joint formal and informal interactions. There is still quite some room for taking more advantage of all the expertise and potential that comes together in this building.

So I will end by apologizing to all of you who have done wonderful things for JIVE in 2011, but go unmentioned today. It seems 2012 will be a year in which we have to break some ground to position us for the future. If we can continue to be as productive as in the past years, I am sure all these good plans will come together. I wish all of us a constructive New Year!