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From the Acting Director of the Accelerator Directorate:
Form Follows Function; Staffing Follows Form

(Photo - Dale Knutson)

The Accelerator Directorate

Vision

Create an environment that fosters globally-recognized leadership in accelerator science and technology capabilities for development of future electron-based accelerators while enabling forefront user research and accelerator R&D programs today.

Mission

1. Deliver beams safely and effectively in support of today's research programs based on world class operational performance and insightful anticipation of programmatic needs.

2. Deliver world-leading capabilities to an R&D portfolio for accelerator science and key accelerator technologies to ensure SLAC remains the laboratory of choice for establishing future accelerators at the frontier of science.

SLAC's new Accelerator Directorate has been created to continue and build on the lab's strong history of excellence in accelerator operations and research. The successful commissioning of the Linac Coherent Light Source, record-breaking performance of PEP-II, outstanding beam delivery and successful top-off injection at SPEAR3, and ongoing, cutting-edge accelerator R&D set the stage for this new directorate. The highly effective technical capabilities underlying these achievements are critical for the lab's future, and our mission to advance SLAC as a world leader in accelerator science.

The new directorate is organized to focus and optimize the lab's accelerator core competencies, while forming a closer tie between accelerator research and operations. It will enable greater consistency in how we approach accelerator operations across the lab, and help ensure optimal support of SLAC science long-term, in a sustainable fashion.

The new organizational structure uses a combination of technical divisions and core team programmatic divisions to deliver our mission. The core teams (the LCLS, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, S20/FACET and Test Facilities Divisions) have the primary mission of safe and effective beam delivery tied to programmatic user requirements that define physics parameters and beam performance. The technical divisions (the Accelerator Research Division, Accelerator Operations and Safety and Accelerator Engineering Division) deliver people and capabilities tied to our strategies and commitments to deliver the mission of contributing to a compelling R&D portfolio.

Staff will report to managers in either a core team or technical division serving administrative and functional management roles. Administrative management roles include staff administrative functions such as paychecks, performance reviews, staff training and development, and overall resource allocations. Each staff member in the Accelerator Directorate will have one and only one administrative manager. However, each staff member may also have functional assignments to managers responsible for one or more scientific core teams or projects. That means one staff member can have multiple functional supervisors, depending what he or she is working on. The functional managers are responsible for day-to-day direction of activities and making sure that work meets the project's needs, and will contribute to staff performance reviews based on this. The technical divisions and core teams are mapped out in the new Accelerator Division organizational chart.

As the new directorate moves into action, please keep your input coming. Your honest feedback is important. This is a big organization and we will succeed only by keeping issues in the open and actively addressed

—Dale Knutson
  SLAC Today, August 28, 2009