Speaker
Description
The Nuclear Data Working Group (NDWG) was established in 2015 to identify cross-cutting nuclear data needs, and to facilitate communication and collaboration across programs on nuclear data activities. The NDWG currently consists of over forty members who represent the needs of program offices across the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and other programs. National Laboratory representatives have been added to the NDWG to contribute knowledge of laboratory research needs and priorities. The NDWG meets annually to plan outreach activities and discuss collaboration on cross-cutting nuclear data priorities. The Nuclear Data Interagency Working Group (NDIAWG) is a federal program manager group led by the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office for Nuclear Physics (NP). They meet regularly to coordinate funding efforts for nuclear data. Several of the programs collaborate through a multi-program Funding Opportunity Announcement managed by NP. The NDWG maintains a website that contains information about the NDWG activities and provides access to workshop reports, nuclear data needs documents and introductory presentations. The website link can be found on the National Nuclear Data Center webpage, and at www.nndc.bnl.gov/ndwg/.
The primary outreach mechanism of the NDWG is the annual Workshop for Applied Nuclear Data Activities (WANDA). Since 2015, the NDWG has organized six WANDA workshops which bring together nuclear data experts, the user community and program managers. The workshops include six to eight topical breakout sessions that encourage input from all attendees through facilitated discussion to identify and prioritize nuclear data needs, and to recommend tasks to improve the nuclear data. The recommendations are summarized in a workshop report. Many of the nuclear data tasks recommended in the WANDA workshops have received funding demonstrating the success of this type of collaborative interaction. This presentation will summarize the recommendations from the WANDA workshops and discuss recent outreach activities and future plans.