RA4. Users Group News
(C. J. Gross, HRIBF User Liaison)

The HRIBF Users Group met on October 24, 2008, in Oakland, CA at the Fall Meeting of the DNP. More than 110 people attended the meeting which was held jointly with the ATLAS, NSCL, GAMMASPHERE/GRETINA, and RIA Users groups and sponsored by HRIBF, ATLAS, and NSCL. Our portion was hosted by UEC chair Walt Loveland. Carl Gross gave the facility update including an account of the failures which resulted in our RIB-delivery shutdown. Krzysztof Rykaczewski gave a report on the performance of the new Low-energy Radioactive Ion Beam Spectroscopy Station (LeRIBSS) and a summary of its capabilities and detector equipment. LeRIBSS is also the subject of recent research and the experimental equipment reports in this newsletter.

The Users Group held its biennial election for the exceutive committee this fall and selected Jeff Winger from Mississippi State and Ray Kozub from Tennessee Tech to replace Walt Loveland and Robert Grzywacz. The new members took office January 1 and will serve for 4 years. We would like to thank Walt and Robert for the work they have done in representing the users and their interests for the past four years. Jeff and Ray join Art Champagne (North Carolina) and Alfredo Galindo-Uribarri (ORNL). The Users Executive Committee met via telephone on January 15, 2009, and elected Ray Kozub to chair this year's committee. The meeting consisted of reports on the facility, equipment, and restart of RIB delivery as well as a discussion on future workshops and possible future involvement with FRIB.

The planned users workshop on science applications and cross-disciplinary fields at HRIBF has been postponed and will be rescheduled for later this calendar year. Users should contact Alfredo Galindo-Uribarri for more information. There are tentative plans to hold a workshop in early summer on neutron detection techniques. Contact Jeff Winger for more information. Their email addresses are on the UEC web page.