Minutes of the 17th AONSA Executive Committee Meeting
Date: 09:30-15:00, November 18 (Friday), 2016
Place: BARC, Mumbai, India
Participants: 20[Board Members]
Sung-Min Choi (President; KNBUA; KAIST)
Kazuyoshi Yamada (Vice-president; JSNS; KEK)
Chris Ling (Secretary; ANBUG; U. Sydney)
Hsiung Chou (Public Relations Officer; TWNSS National Sun Yat-Sen U)
Evvy Kartini (Member-at-Large; BATAN; Indonesian community)
Saibal Basu (Member-at-Large; NSSI; BARC)[Members]
Darminto (INSS; Institute of Technology, Surabaya)
Yoshiaki Kiyanagi (JSNS; Nagoya U)
Jae-Ho Chung (KNBUA; Korea U)
Kookheon Char (KNBUA; Seoul National U)
S.M. Yusuf (NSSI; BARC)
K.G. Suresh (NSSI; IIT Bombay)[Observers]
Abdul Aziz Mohamed (Malaysian Community; UNITEN)
Toshiji Kanaya (J-PARC)
Mitsuhiro Shibayama (JRR3)
Jamie Shulz (ANSTO)
Chang-Hee Lee (HANARO)
Samrath Chaplot (BARC)
R. Mukhopadhyay (BARC)[Special Observers]
Hideki Seto (KEK)1[Apologies]
Fangwei Wang (CSNS)
Hesheng Chen (CNSS; IHEP)
Guang-ai Sun (CMRR)
Ya-Sen Sun (TWNSS; National Central U)
Yuntao Liu (CARR)
Dongfeng Chen (Treasurer; CNSS; CIAE)
Wen-Hsien Li (Past President; TWNSS; NCU)
Erich Kisi (ANBUG; U Newcastle)

Group photo of the 17th AONSA Executive Committee Meeting at BARC, Mumbai, India

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Schedule
November 18 (Friday)
09:30-09:40 Opening Remarks (S-M Choi)
09:40-09:45 Approval of Agenda
09:45-09:50 Report on the Minutes of the 16th AONSA EC Meeting in Dongguan (C Ling)
09:50-10:00 Report from the AONSA Office (H Seto, H Chou) (Appendix 4)
10:00-11:00 Discussion and Decisions
11:00-11:20 Coffee Break
11:20-12:30 Discussion and Decisions
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-15:10 Reports from Neutron Associations
15:10-15:15 Closing Remarks (S-M Choi)

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Minutes
1. Opening remarks by AONSA President Sung-Min Choi
AONSA President Sung-Min Choi welcomed all members and observers to Mumbai, andthanked the local organisers of the meeting for delivering an excellent School including awonderful rooftop banquet on Thursday night.
2. Approval of Agenda
The Agenda of the 17th AONSA EC meeting was approved by the EC.
3. Approval of Minutes of the 16th AONSA EC Meeting
The Minutes of the 16th AONSA EC meeting in Dongguan, China, which was circulated to
the EC members and observers through email previously, were distributed to all the EC
participants as hard copies at the meeting. The minutes were approved.
4. Report from the AONSA Office
H Seto presented a detailed report on the operations and outlook for the AONSA Office(Appendix 2). He pointed out several issues to be considered by the EC. In particular, thebanking arrangements are unsatisfactory due to the need for the Secretary (C Doda) to travel
to Tokyo to arrange international money transfers. This is exacerbated by the increasing rateof AONSA activities that require such transfers. It is also important to note that there is anexcessive reliance on the skills and time of C Doda, who is not guaranteed to remain at JPARC in the long-term. Alternative banking options include: moving to another Japanesebank that provides online access to international transfers (which would incur ~US$500 p.a.
for each of our two accounts); or moving to an account in another country with lower fees.
The EC thanked T. Kanaya, H Seto and J-PARC for their continuing support in hosting the
AONSA Office, and C Doda for her outstanding work in the service of AONSA. H Chou
undertook to take on more of the editing duties for the AONSA Newsletter, thus relievingsome of the burden on the AONSA Office. The EC acknowledged that the current situation
with respect to the banking arrangements is not sustainable in the long-term. However,~US$1000 p.a. fees is not ideal for a society with limited funds; and moving the account toanother country will create other difficulties and complications.
4Action: Board members undertook to discuss AONSA’s banking requirements offline andreport back to the EC with their recommendation on the best way forward.
At the beginning of the afternoon session of EC meeting (just before the society report), H
Seto showed the schematics for bank account arrangement to the EC. It was proposed to havea pair of banks (in USD and Japan Yen) available for international money transfer andinternet banking. This will cost about 500 USD per year. Since there is no other option atpresent, the EC agreed to proceed as proposed by H Seto.
A solution remains elusive and H Seto indicated that the AONSA Office arrangements at JPARC can continue in the short to medium term, but that the conversation about alternatives
should be an ongoing one.
5. Discussions and formal matters5.1. Financial matters
C Ling presented the Annual Fee, Prize Fund and Budget Plan on behalf of D Chen
(Appendix 4). The report was accepted. S-M Choi suggested that we should consider ways
(new activities) in which we could use AONSA’s capital funds (Annual Fee) rather thanaccumulating it in a low-interest savings account.
5.2. AONSA Prize 2017
K Yamada reported that the Selection Committee has unanimously decided to award the
AONSA Prize 2017 to Prof Nobuo Niimura of Ibaraki University. This was warmly received
and approved by the EC. The award ceremony will take place during ICNS-2017 in July 2017.
There were four outstanding nominees this year, and the Selection Committee had a difficult
task. One nominee who was not selected this time will be rolled over to the next review (forthe AONSA Prize 2019). The other two were being considered for the second time alreadyand their nominations will not be taken further.
Action: AONSA Prize Selection Committee to make a public announcement of the award of
the Prize to Prof Niimura through the AONSA web page, Newsletter and other means.
K Yamada noted that in future, nominations for the Prize should more strictly follow the rules,
5especially the requirement for 2–4 seconding letters in addition to the nomination letter.
5.3. AONSA Young Research Fellows
The AONSA YRF 2015 submitted a report to the EC (Appendix 3), which was gratefullyreceived.
K Yamada reported that the Selection Committee for the AONSA YRF 2017 has nominated 4
AONSA YRFs for 2017 (out of 7 applicants). All the nominated candidates were gladly
approved by the EC.
Action: AONSA YRF Selection Committee to inform and congratulate the selected YRFs, withcc to the Directors of their host facilities; and make a public announcement through the
AONSA web page, Newsletter and Neutron News.
Action: President of AONSA to send the Certificate of AONSA Fellow 2017 to the selected
YRFs.
Action: AONSA Office to communicate with the selected YRFs regarding airfare support.
K Yamada noted that in the future, applicants should consult more closely with hosting
facilities (both their 1st and 2nd choices) in advance, to help refine and target their applications;and that they should be required to apply for beamtime at those facilities in advance. The EC
agreed that this requirement should be formally introduced.
Action: C Ling to amend the rules for the AONSA YRF on the web page to reflect the required
to contact and apply for beamtime at an applicant’s first two preferred host facilities inadvance of lodging an application.
S-M Choi thanked K Yamada for his work in chairing both these Selection Committees, andpointed out that this is an unreasonably heavy burden for one Board member. In 2017, K
Yamada will continue to chair the Selection Committee for YRF 2018 only (there being no
AONSA Prize Selection Committee in 2017). For 2018, it was proposed that a second Board
member be assigned as Chair of the AONSA YRF Selection Committee, thus sharing theworkload. It was also proposed that the call for applications be moved to earlier in the year, toimprove coordination with beamtime applications and allocations. Both proposals were6

approved by the EC.
Action: Board to identify a member who will act as Chair of the AONSA YRF Selection
Committee for 2018; and to determine the most appropriate date for the call for applications.
5.4. Asia-Oceania Conference on Neutron Scattering
H Chou reported on the status of TWNSS preparations to host AOCNS-2019 (Appendix 5).
The meeting will be held from 11-15 November 2019. There will be three parallel sessions
plus an Instrumentation Session on the first day. The conference will also include a dedicated
AONSA YRF session. The EC thanked the organisers for their efforts.
5.6. AONSA Neutron School
S Basu and SM Yusuf reported on the 8th AONSA school being held in BARC. The School
had approximately 100 participants, of whom 15 were fully registered international students
and 28 were fully registered local students. Students attended lectures covering the full rangeof neutron scattering techniques and had the opportunity to perform experiments on at least
two different types of instrument. S-M Choi and the EC thanked the organisers for theirefforts on behalf of the students.
Action: S Basu and SM Yusuf to collect feedback from the AONSA Neutron School students
and pass this on to the EC.
It was suggested that HANARO hosts the 9th AONSA Neutron School in 2017. However, it
was pointed out that since ICNS2017 will be held in Korea in July 2017, there may be somedifficulties in schedule for HANARO to host the School in 2017.
The 9th AONSA School is proposed to be held at J-PARC in December 2017, in combination
with their annual MLF School. This is still to be confirmed: if it goes ahead, the 10th AONSA
School would be held at HANARO in 2018; if not, we will try to find other possibilities sothat we don’t skip the AONSA School in 2017.
5.7. ICNS2017 in Korea
K Char presented a report from the organizers of the ICNS2017 in Korea (Appendix 6). It was7noted in addition that the 18th EC Meeting and 13th Facility Directors’ Meeting would be heldin combination on the morning of the first day, finishing before the welcome reception. The
EC thanked the organisers for their efforts.
5.8. AONSA Newsletters and Homepage
H Chou (Public Relations Officer) reported that that next newsletter (Volume 8 Number 2)
was scheduled for release on December 22, 2016. To meet this deadline, all items must be
submitted to the AONSA Office for editing by November 29.
5.9. Activities Related to SE Asia and Other Non-member Countries
C Ling reported that Roppon Picha had advised him (Appendix 7) that the Thailand Instituteof Nuclear Technology (TINT) and the Synchrotron Light Research Institute (SLRI) are stillplanning to co-host the 19th EC meeting in Nov 2017. They plan to hold a one-day neutron
scattering seminar and a Synchrotron Science Camp in parallel to the meeting.
The EC approved TINT as the venue for the 19th EC meeting. It discussed the question ofdates and determined that the first two weeks of November would be best (pending thedetermination of dates for the J-PARC MLF School around the same time). Three days would
be required in total for the Symposia, EC and FDM meetings.
Action: C Ling to inform R Picha of these preferred dates.
S-M Choi noted that he had recently been in contact with representatives of the neutron
scattering communities of the Philippines (Dr. Maria Celerina Ramiro, Philippine Nuclear
Research Institute; Appendix 13), Vietnam (Dr. Nguyen Nhi Dien, former Director of Nuclear
Research Institute at Dalat, Vietnam; Appendix 14) and Mongolia (Prof. Deleg Sangaa,
Physics, National University of Mongolia; Appendix 15). He would continue to pursue theseand explore the possibilities for potential future engagement.
5.10. Cooperation with ICSU, IUCr and IAEA
The EC thanked the IAEA for their continued support of the AONSA Neutron School in its
8th edition this year.

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S-M Choi suggested that we should pursue the possibility of securing new funding (forexample from IAEA) for travel to neutron facilities for scientists from developing countries.
5.11. Cooperation with NSSA and ENSA
S-M Choi and H Seto reported that they attended ACNS-2016 and met with the leadership of
NSSA. They had a fruitful and mutually educational discussion. A similar meeting, which
will hopefully also include the leadership of ENSA, is planned to take place at ICNS-2017,5.12. Cooperation with AOFSRR
S-M Choi reported that he met briefly with the next President of AOFSRR (Andrew Peele of
the Australian Synchrotron) in Sydney in the second half of 2016, and discussed possiblesynergies between AONSA and AOFSRR. K Yamada informed the EC that the current
President of AOFSRR is Dr Y Murakami of KEK, and that he would discuss possiblesynergies between AONSA and AOFSRR with him.
6. Reports from Neutron Associations-

ANBUG (Appendix 8)
INSS (Appendix 9)
JSNS (Appendix 10)
KNUBA (Appendix 11)
TWNSS (Appendix 12)
NSSI

7. Closing remarks
In closing the meeting, President S-M Choi thanked all the participants, and again thanked
our Indian colleagues for their great efforts in organising the EC and FDM meetings and the
AONSA Neutron School. He looked forward to meeting again in Korea next year.

9Appendix 1: Calendar of AONSA Activities
Year 2016
Date

Eventsth

Nov 17

12 AONSA Facility Directors’ Meeting (Mumbai, India)

Nov 1817th AONSA EC Meeting (Mumbai, India)

Nov 15-19

8th AONSA Neutron School (Mumbai, India)

Nov 22-26

Neutron and Muon School (Tokai, Japan)

Dec 1-2

16th JSNS Annual Meeting (Nagoya, Japan)

Dec 5-6

AINSE-ANBUG Neutron Science Symposium (Lucas Heights, Australia)

Year 2017
Date

Eventsth

Mar 10-13

7 Taiwan-Japan Joint Meeting on X-ray and Neutron Scattering

May 26HANARO Symposium (KAERI, Korea)

July 913th AONSA Facility Directors’ Meeting (Daejeon, Korea)

July 918th AONSA EC Meeting (Daejeon, Korea)

July 9-13

ICNS-2017 (Daejeon, Korea)

Oct 8-12

International Conference on Nuclear Science and Technology Application(Yogyakarta, Indonesia)

Nov

13th AONSA Facility Directors’ Meeting (Bangkok, Thailand)

Nov

19th AONSA EC Meeting (Bangkok, Thailand)

Dec 2-3

17th JSNS Annual Meeting (Fukuoka, Japan)

10Appendix 2: Report from AONSA OfficeProf. Hideki Seto, 8 November 2016
Present jobs of AONSA Office concerning:
AONSA EC meeting
AONSA Office sends a copy of the account book and bankbooks to Treasurer’s secretary(Limei) by mail. The secretary makes a summary of the AONSA budget for Treasurer toreport at EC.
AONSA Neutron School
Money remittance of support fee to a host association of the school.
AONSA Newsletter
Following an INDEX approved by AONSA-EC, the secretaries collect articles and send themto the PR officer for checking the contents. All the articles are edited and formatted by thesecretaries and distributed from AONSA Office.
Annual Fee
Collect AONSA annual fees once in a year from the member associations.
Issue an Invoice and receipt by the secretary’s name (Chris). Keep the account book andupdate the bankbook.
Website maintenance
Update AONSA website when requested.
Update record of this term
July 6: Update- AONSA neutron school 2016 in India (create and uploaded announcementbanner)July 7: Update-AONSA calendar 2016&2017
July 7: Add Sitemap
Modify thumbnail size in each page
Check links to prevent link rot
Check each society’s link and fix link errors
Check each society’s website link to be opened in a new tab.
Check and set up all the links
11June 9: Update-AONSA Prize Call for nominations
June 16: Update-AONSA Young Research Fellowship 2017 call for Applications
June 17: Update-AONSA Member Associations
AONSA Prize
Order AONSA prize medal and arrange money remittance for the award winner.
AONSA Young Research Fellowship:
Work as “Contact” for any inquiries and receive application forms. List up and send
application documents to the chair of the YRF selection committee. Arrange to getreimbursement for fellows who paid the return trip airfare to join research fellowship.
Proposals from AONSA Office–––

There are many difficulties in the editing process of the AONSA Newsletter, forexample, too long articles, many photos, etc. These difficulties arise especially when
the PR officer is not in the same country. We propose to limit the job of the AONSA
Office to the formatting of articles. Collected articles should be edited by the PR
officer before the AONSA Office works.
The bank accounts are better to move Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Cooperation.
Recently, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ changes the policy of an international
money transfer, and a secretary of the AONSA Office cannot handle the process byherself any more. The AONSA Office requires AONSA-EC to approve to change thebank and to pay monthly fee (4320 JPY) to keep the bank accounts for the internet
banking.
The AONSA Office activity relies strongly on the personal ability of Chikako Doda,
whose employment period will be ended at March, 2018. MLF will make every
effort to hire another talented secretary, but not easy to find an appropriate person in
Japan who has an enough ability in English. AONSA-EC had better to consider apossibility to move AONSA Office to another country.

12Appendix 3: Report from AONSA YRF 2015
Xinzhi Liu, China Institute of Atomic Energy, 2015 AONSA Young Research Fellow
My fellowship started from Sept. 28th, 2015 and finished at Sept. 27th, 2016 at Australia
Centre for Neutron Scattering (ACNS, former Bragg institute), ANSTO. During my stay in
ANSTO, I worked with Prof. Frank Klose on Polarized Neutron Reflectometry (PNR)
Platypus and Dr. Kirrily Rule on thermal triple-axis spectrometer (TAS) Taipan. Meanwhile, I
was also involved some collaborated projects on lead by my supervisor and myself other
instruments (diffractometer Wombat, Echidna). My work include the user experiment,
instrumentation and calibration as well as helping user analyze the data and write research
report.
In the past year, I have participated the user experiment more than 120 days (Platypus>80days, Taipan >20days, Wombat & Echidna >20days), including more than 15 projects. Allof them focusing on the magnetism, including the magnetic structure and excitation in bulk
materials and interfacial magnetism in thin film system. Some promising scientific results
have been produced and is under preparing for publication. Through these experiments I got
familiar with the PNR, diffraction and inelastic neutron scattering technology, as well as how
to use multiple sample environment (kinds of cryostat, magnet, furnace).
As a part of PNR group, I have involved or lead many projects under the guidance of Frank
Klose: the PNR and XRR investigation of Ni/NiO supercapacitor system (collaborated with
Yangyang Li, CityU of Hong Kong), the magnetism in the SrTiO3/[(Sm,Sr)MnO3 /YBa2Cu3O7]x4 multilayer and single (Sm, Sr)MnO3 film system (collaborated with Grace Lin,
Taiwan National university), the interface induced magnetism in LaAlO3/[CaMnO3/LaAlO3]x n superlattice system (collaborated with Sean Lee, UNSW), the irradiation modified
interfacical magnetism in the SrTiO3/(La,Sr)MnO3/NiFe bilayer system(collaborated with
Ko-Wei Lin, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan) , etc. Some of those results are reallyinteresting and have promising scientific significance. Via those collaborative research I also
got familiar with the relevant scientific discipline and many excellent scientists. I also learned
how to do the user support, how to work as a sophisticate instrument scientist and how toorganize and push forward a research project. In addition, I have also performed apreliminary neutron guide simulation for new coming Bio-Ref spectrometer from HZB underguidance of Frank Klose.

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On the thermal TAS Taipan, I have learned many skills on the TAS commissioning,calibration and sample alignment from Kirrily Rule and many knowledge and technologies of
the Be-filter with Anton Stampfl. Also, so many user experiments on taipan I haveparticipated and involved. I also got the feasibility beam time to perform some INS study on
my TbFe1-xMnxO3 single crystal sample, the preliminary result has been summarized into a
proposal of next round. Moreover, I also attended the inelastic neutron scattering summer
school hosted by ANSTO at Nov. 2015. In this school I learned not only TAS technology, butalso other INS instrument and technologies, e.g., Time of Flight method and instrument, backscattering instrument. Four practical experiments on Taipan (thermal - TAS), Sika (coldTAS), Pelican (ToF), Emu (back scattering spectrometer) was performed on my own hand,greatly increasing my sight on INS.
On the wombat I have completed several experiments as a user with Andrew Studer andChin-Wei Wang( the in-situ stain and magnetic field mediated magneto-structural transitionin (Ni,Mn)Ga2 Heusler alloy, collaborated with CityU Hokong , the magnetic structure ofroom temperature multiferroic BSCFAO Y-hexaferrite, collaborated with Institute of Physics,
CAS. The magnetism and spin - reorientation in HoFe1-xCrxO3 system and the modified
magnetism by Fe-doping in YbMn1-xFexO3 system, lead by myself). Some of them have very
promising results. The partial results have been published (Journal of Magnetism andMagnetic Materials, Volume 417, p. 382-388, Scientific Reports 6: 33448 (2016)), remaining
results are still being preparation.
In addition the work on the neutron instruments, I also made a great progress on the proposal
program. For past two rounds, I have submitted about 10 proposals to 4 different instruments.
Most of these proposals I collaborated with the user from mainland of China, Taiwan andHong Kong. I think this will also promote the collaboration between different members of
AONSA. During the past year, I have made very good friends with scientist in ACNS. In
future, much bigger collaboration and output can be expected. I think this is also theimportant spirit of this fellowship.
In summary, I have dedicated to more than 15 significant projects which would makepronounced scientific output. Through these works, I made a big progress on my own
capability and expertise as an instrument scientist. It’s important to me to get involved into
the international neutron scattering community and establish my academic reputation. I
would say it is a successful and fruitful fellowship.

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In the future, I will continue my career in my home institution – China institute of atomic
energy - as an instrument scientist. I may work on the TAS, powder diffractometer and NR.
Also, as a part of China neutron scattering community, I would and should bring morecollaboration between ANSTO and Chinese users as well as China’s NS facilities. That would
be my great pleasure and honor.
During my stay as young research fellow, ANSTO and my supervisors have provided me very
decent research platform, work environment and superior living support. Here I would greatly
appreciate all the supports from ANSTO and my supervisors.
At last, thanks for the great opportunity AONSA have offered to me, and all helps and great
supports you gave to me. I wish AONSA make bigger success on promoting the neutron
scattering enterprise in Asia and Oceania.

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