Public Minutes of 72 nd Steering Board meeting

June 14th, 2012

**Attendees: **Vladimir Ivantchenko, Andrea Dotti, Takashi Sasaki, Ben Morgan, Alberto Ribon, Gunter Folger, Mike Kelsey, Makoto Asai, John Allison (OB liaison), Gabriele Cosmo, Ivana Hrivnacova, Koichi Murakami, Dennis Wright, Peter Gumplinger, Sébastien Incerti, Pablo Cirrone, Marc Verderi, Hisaya Kurashige

**Excuses: **Daniel Elvira

  1. Regular Items

a. Open requirements,

b. Pending actions,

have been reviewed.

  1. Spokesperson Election

  2. Report from the Election Management Team (EMT)

· The candidate nomination resulted in the single candidate Makoto Asai proposed independently by several collaborators.

· SB members approved nomination by large consensus (19 votes YES)

· The election followed the condition laid out in the regulations for a vote of confidence in the present case of a single candidate.

· A tallier not being a collaborator was proposed to the Steering Board (SB), and accepted (15 votes YES) by 4-April

· The call for votes was sent on 4-April, opening the election period initially until 19-April; the election process requests a quorum of 2/3 of voters to be reached. A reminder was sent on 18-April, as votes at that time were not reaching the required quorum.

· All votes sent before by 19-April were accepted and quorum was largely reached.

· Result, as communicated to the Collaboration on 20-April are:

o 72 votes YES,

o 4 votes of ABSTAIN,

o 2 votes NO.

· This vote of confidence confirms Makoto Asai as new spokesperson, as the vote fulfills the conditions of the regulations, 2/3 of all collaborators voting, and by far more than the required 50% of all votes being positive.

  1. SB endorsement

· The SB endorsed the process and the result of this election.

· The SB also thanks all people participating to the election process.

  1. **9.6-beta release **

a. Release process:

The 9.6-beta release, due on June 29th 2012 is on track

b. Review of working plan for 2012:

planned\_features

· Geometry

The finalization of the implementation for precise ComputeSafety() will not be in 9.6-beta in time and remains scheduled for the final release.

c. Performance and physics validation:

· A 2-3% degradation is observed for basically all hadronic physics lists. Effects are not observed for EM physics. Investigation is ongoing.

d. Geant4-MT v9.5-p01:

· The new release is delaying due to still missing CMake configuration adaptation. As soon as this is solved, Geant4-MT 9.5-p01 will be released.

  1. 2012 Collaboration meeting:

o A preliminary web page is now open. Collaborators are requested to start individual paperwork. URL: http://llr.in2p3.fr/sites/g4-2012/home.html

o The registration will start in two weeks.

o Steering Board members are requested to propose parallel sessions and also themes of plenary sessions.

o Steering Board members are also reminded, given the meeting is held in early September, to prepare the program well in advance before people get into summer vacations.

o The Program Committee members are proposed and approved:

§ Laurent Garnier

§ Alex Howard

§ Alberto Ribon

§ Ivana Hrivnacova (local organizer)

§ Makoto Asai (ex-officio)

§ Marc Verderi (ex-officio and local organizer)

  1. System testing shifts & bug reports

§ CDASH is now proposed as the main monitoring system for system testing.

§ Future support of GNUmake will be discussed at the Collaboration meeting.

§ Several bug reports are quite old and unattended. It is proposed and agreed to walkthrough open bug reports at each Steering Board meeting.

6. Input from recent events

**a. Event biasing mini-workshop: **

The mini-workshop took place from 14th to 16th of May at the LAPP, Annecy. It reviewed the biasing options existing in Geant4 and had a special focus towards addressing theoretical (weight computation) design and technical issues regarding missing biasing functionalities. Good progresses have been made for biasing regarding interaction occurrence (exponential transform, forced interaction, forced flight, etc.) User’s interface received attention. Further discussions will happen for what concerns biasing of final state at the Collaboration meeting.

b. CHEP

All collaboration talks were appreciated. Keynote by DOE acknowledged Geant4.

**c. PTCOG **

The frequent citation of Geant4 in talks and posters at PTCOG makes clear that Geant4 has become a well accepted and trusted tool within the proton and ion therapy community.

d. Tutorials

· NASA/MSFC

4.5 day tutorial, ~30 participants, mostly NASA/MSFC with a few last minutes externals

· Porto Conte, Italy

5 day tutorial shared with FLUKA, ~20 participants, some from outside of Italy.

  1. AOB

a. KISTI

§ M. Asai is communicating with KISTI (Korean Institute for Science and Technology Information) for potential involvement in the Collaboration.

b. Publication board

§ D. Wright reported that the term of J. Apostolakis will be over in August. The Steering Board should now appoint the successor.

c. African school of physics

§ A. Dotti has been invited to the next African school of physics to be held in Ghana this summer. The school is supported by CERN. The Steering Board endorsed his commitment.

Meeting Date

Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 12:00