Director's Weekly Reports

Monday and Tuesday were consumed by the annual merit reviews of the whole of the scientific staff - an important but tiring process where I, along with the Associate Directors, go through every activity report and discuss relative merits and accomplishments.

I attended a very grand dinner on Tuesday evening at the Bollinger residence to recognize the nine CU honorary degree recipients - our good friend and generous benefactor Jerry Lenfest was among the honorees. It was  enjoyable but I had to stay up way way past my regular bed time! (Wednesday was commencement in case you missed it!)

The very first rumblings from NSF are being heard regarding implementation of their plans to disburse stimulus funding - we all wait with great expectations!

Little bits of information are trickling out about the all important President's request for FY2010 - more complete data will be available next week - but let me share a few numbers.

The FY10 request for NSF Geosciences is $909M versus the FY08 Actual of $758M - a healthy increase of 19.9 per cent. This is very good news.  NOAA did not fare so well - only a 1.5 per cent increase (relative to FY08 actual) for OAR and for NASA science a decrease of 4.9 per cent. But the real story on this, and its impact on Geosciences I am sure lies in the next level of budget detail which we will not see till next week. Remarkably, Science at DoE has an FY10 request of $5813M relative to an FY08 actual of $4080M - an increase of an amazing 42.5 per cent...

Last Sunday we held a meeting of the Alumni Association Board prior to a very well-attended lunch for members of FOLD (Friends of Lamont-Doherty) - almost forty folks attended - and its success was only eclipsed by the excellent public lecture (the third in this years series) that followed the lunch. Nick Christie-Blick and Byrdie Renik talked about Continental Stretching to a near capacity crowd in Monell.

Wednesday afternoon was spent with our Advisory Board. They were treated to a tour of the "Seismology Museum" in the basement of the cafeteria, thanks to Art Lerner-Lam and Won Young Kim, before engaging in one of the best attended and most active meetings we have had. The central agenda item was that of improving Lamont's visibility, and Kevin Krajick and Kim Martineau gave a great overview of the impressively large amount of diverse press coverage that we have been receiving in recent months.  Robin Bell was the featured science speaker and told the great story of the recent expedition to Antarctica that she led with colleague Michael Studinger.

I got back from DC late Friday night after a classic five hour long weather-related debacle with the Delta shuttle. The leadership of the US Implementing Organizations for the Ocean Drilling Program came into town on Sunday afternoon for a dinner that night and a day-long meeting on Monday. Most of the discussions were focused upon the many leadership changes that are occurring in practically every area of the program - except Lamonts - thank goodness.  Texas A&M is recruiting a new Geosciences Dean (to whom ODP-TAMU reports) as well as a new Director of the program to follow-on after Jeff Fox. And Kyoshi Suyehiro of JAMSTEC is taking over from Manik Talwani as President of the international management office for IODP. While all this is going on JOIDES Resolution is drilling successfully in the Pacific, with a
major celebration planned in early May during the Honolulu port call - Arden Bement, Director NSF will be the keynote speaker.

There was a Council of Deans meeting on Tuesday - probably there will be only one more during Alan Brinkley's tenure as Provost. No convincing rumors are circulating re the identity of Alan's replacement - obviously a critical appointment for both Lamont and the Earth Institute.

Langseth arrives in Taiwan tomorrow, after her long Trans-Pacific transit. Rumor is that she will escorted into the harbor with fireboats spraying hoses and greeted on the dock with a traditional Dragon dance - it should be quite a photo op!

We welcomed Connie Class to ExCom this morning for the first time, as the new Geochem representative - she had a magical effect because for the first time in living memory we finished the meeting in under two hours! In the informal information-swapping session, Bruce Huber brought up something that I had not appreciated - something quite
impressive. Lamont has had six separate research teams working in Antarctica this (southern) summer - some on ships, some on the ice and some in the air - but six separate groups. Another Lamont first, I would guess.

Almost six months into the fiscal year, the Federal agencies that support our research finally got their budgets. The president signed HR 1105, the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 on Tuesday. NSF gets 7.6 per cent above 2008 (and is directed among other things to spend $10M on Climate Change education); and NOAA gets an increase of 12
percent and there was this very interesting and important directive to NOAA:

"By not providing enough extramural research funding, NOAA risksg discouraging extramural involvement in NOAA's research programs and the concomitant leveraging of external funds in support of mission-oriented research. Thus, NOAA is encouraged to provide additionalg extramural funding in future budget requests"

Lamont received a rare amount of coverage in the CU's Record this week - not only a great photo of Doug Martinson doing his "Ocean Station Obama" thing, but also a good write up on the passage of the Research Professorships though the Senate - marred only by its (incorrect) inference that this was an initiative restricted to the senior staff. Speaking of errors - I was wrong last week when I said that Lamont should be proud that we had won two outstanding student paper awards at the last Fall AGU - the truth is that we won three! I apologize to Jenny Arbuswewski for not previously recognizing her accomplishment - her paper was entitled "Towards a global calibration of the G. ruber (white) Mg/Ca Paleothermometer".

I spent five hours in four different EI meetings downtown on Monday afternoon and had eight appointments in my diary for Tuesday. And on Thursday enjoyed an excellent event in the Rotunda of the Low Library in honor of the great Benefactor and CU Trustee Gerry Lenfest. President Bollinger recognized him as fourth largest donor to CU of all time - and joked that given Gerry's competitive spirit he was sure that Gerry would want to become number 1!  Anyhow I promised Gerry an opportunity to drive Langseth when she comes to the east coast - an offer of which he may take advantage!

The Federal stimulus package that the Senate-House Conference Committee has agreed to contains a total of $3.5B for NSF, including $2.5B for research and Related Activities (i.e. the Research Directorates), $300M for Major Research Infrastructure and $400M for Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction. NSF has to spend this in 120 days (I think that's right) so I expect it will go to programs for which they already have fully reviewed proposals.  It will have long term impact over the next 2-3 years as it will relieve pressure on programs - allowing managers to fund the backlog of
activities that have been held back for lack of funding.  This is really important and very very good news for us all!

The House passed this earlier today - the Senate may vote as early as this evening.  It is almost too good to be true!

So this was a very good week to receive a visit from Tim Killeen, the Assistant Director for the Geosciences at NSF - he had an excellent visit on Wednesday, and I believe went away impressed. Interestingly, he had never before visited Lamont.

As reported last week, I met with the CU Senate Faculty Affairs Committee (FAC) last Friday. Earlier this week I was informed of the result of their vote on the Lamont Research Professorship plan. It was unanimously in favor. This is a major step forward.  The FAC will now take this proposal forward to the next meeting of the full Senate - which takes place on February 6th (which creates a scheduling nightmare for me because that is the day that Julie Morris and Bob
Detrick are visiting from NSF).  Nevertheless - there is nothing more important than this, so I will attend the Senate meeting in order to handle any questions that come up. If we clear the Senate, then the next step will be the drafting by the Provost's office of the formal language to be added to the University's statutes, establishing these new positions. This language will then have to be approved by the President and the Trustees.