At the first LCFOA meeting, attendees received a tour of the ILC test area at Fermilab.

The Linear Collider Forum of America, a not-for-profit industrial forum, will hold its spring 2006 meeting at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, CA on 1-2 May. Speakers will include Barry Barish, Director ILC Global Design Effort; Gerry Dugan, GDE Regional Director for the Americas; and Jonathan Dorfan, Director SLAC. Additional speakers from the national laboratories, universities and the Department of Energy have been invited to address the group. Separate focus areas will be set up to discuss the key technology challenges of the ILC.

A lot has happened since the last industry forum at Fermilab in September: The ILC received an increase from $30M to $60M in the Administration’s budget request submitted to Congress for FY 2007. The President’s American Competitiveness Initiative calls for a doubling the Federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next ten years. The Department of Energy’s FY06 budget for the physical sciences is $3.5B. A baseline configuration document (BCD) for the ILC has been completed and placed under configuration management control. And work on the Reference Design Report (RDR) is well under way. The latest news about the ILC is available online.

The meeting at SLAC is open to all parties interested in hearing the progress of the many ongoing efforts supporting the ILC and in learning where the opportunities are for significant future industrial participation in this program. There is no registration fee. Additional information and a final agenda will be posted on www.lcfoa.org by mid-April.

We look forward to your participation in this meeting. Please register by April 20 via the LCFOA web site. If you have any questions, contact Ken Olsen, President of the LCFOA, at ken.olsen@lcfoa.org.