Director's Weekly Reports
Lamont Weekly Report, August 27, 2010
I was down in DC for a day, wearing my Consortium for Ocean Leadership hat, sitting in on the first NSF review of the Ocean Observatories Initiative Operations and Maintenance activity. It was really just a review of planning and budgeting since it will be a few years before any assets are actually deployed, but it was indicative of the microscopic scrutiny that large NSF projects are receiving in the current DC climate of heightened accountability and mistrust. It was depressing to see the magnitude of the effort that went into preparing for this review on the part of the Implementing Organizations, Scripps, WHOI, UW and OSU. A sign of the times I fear...
Lamont Weekly Report, August 13, 2010
I have been out of the office all week, enjoying the sunshine, dry air and cool evenings of coastal Maine...
Lamont Weekly Report, August 6 2010
It has been a tough week. Last weekend we received the tragic news from the Langseth (working on the Shatsky Rise in the Western Pacific) that one of our Marine Mammal Observers, John Nicholas, had died of a heart attack. A very sad day. The vessel immediately diverted for the closest port - a five day steam to Yokohama Japan. Thanks to the
organizational skills of our Marine Department Langseth had a very short port stop in Yokohama yesterday and already is steaming back to her work site...
Lamont Weekly Report, July 30 2010
I spent Monday in meetings with leadership of the National Math and Science initiative (NMSI) - a very successful NGO that is committed to improving the quality of math and science education at grade school levels. A very successful and productive day - that we hope will lead to some more tangible and significant partnerships between CU and NMSI. Considerable thanks are due to LDEO Advisory board member Frank Gumper for setting this up...
Lamont Weekly Report, July 23 2010
It feels like it has been a quiet week, but looking at my diary I see I have participated in 22 different meetings and appointments, so it could not have been that quiet.
As no doubt many of you have heard we are losing a number of very important 'Friends of Lamont' from the senior administration within CU over the coming months: David Hirsh EVP for Research, Henry Pinkham, Dean of GSAS and Richie Ruttenberg, Deputy Controller. All have been valuable friends to us in recent years and we will miss their assistance and strong support. As their replacements are named we will, of course, work to build similarly good relations with their successors...
Lamont Weekly Report, July 16 2010
We have settled upon Friday, September 24th for the event to recognize the life and science John Diebold. We are preparing formal invitations and will circulate widely as soon as possible. It will be in the Monell Auditorium from 1:30pm til 4:30pm with a reception to follow...
Lamont Weekly Report, July 9, 2010
I have been receiving emails all this week from all over the US and from around the world from folks expressing their feelings about the sad news of John Diebold's passing. (We are posting a small selection of these on the web). All the thoughts that we had of him being a very special man are confirmed again and again by the outpourings of warmth and
affection...
Lamont Weekly Report, July 2, 2010
I met John Diebold in the middle seventies, the time when he, along with Paul Stoffa and Peter Buhl and several others were convincing the world that all seismic structure problems could be solved with big airgun arrays, long hydrophone streamers, expanding spread profiles and tau-p space. At the time I remained conservatively entrenched in the old school of marine seismology, espousing the superior signal-to-noise ratios available when 500 pound charges of TNT were detonated. We shared a cabin for two months in 1979 aboard the Conrad in the Eastern Pacific during the ill-fated ROSE experiment and had many discussions about the pros and cons of various approaches to marine seismics.
Lamont Weekly Report, June 25 2010
We were visited by the CU Treasurer and more than ten of her staff onTuesday afternoon - thanks to all who helped host this group. Theylook after all of CU's "treasure" and therefore are an importantgroup with whom to be friends! As is so often the case, many of thefolks had never been out to Lamont before so it was an importantopportunity for us to impress them with the importance of the work thatwe do here...
Lamont Weekly Report, June 18 2010
If there is one problem that never goes away - it is the problem of space. There is never enough of it, and on the rare occasion that thereis, then it is in the wrong place. It is very healthy that we arealways feeling space pressure because it means that we are growing - bringing in new resources - and as the ~$16M that we (or more correctly you - the PIs) won in federal stimulus grants this year beginsto get spent (i.e. new people hired) the pressure to find space to put them grows. I had several meetings this week focused upon trying to solve specific problems - and there will be more in the coming weeks and months. One good piece of news on this front is that the competitive process to select the architect and construction manager for the New Core Lab renovation project is complete and so, finally, we are a few weeks away from finishing off the award negotiations with NSF. In the short term, of course, this project will only add to our space woes because we shall have to find swing space to house folks temporarily as the second floor of the New Core lab gets completely taken apart and rebuilt...
Lamont Weekly Report, June 11 2010
We held another highly successful meeting of the Executive Committee of our Advisory Board meeting on Wednesday afternoon - with star speakers Terry Plank talking about the unpronounceable Iceland volcano, and Stefan Mrozewski from the Borehole Research Group providing a balanced (and comprehensible) view of what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico. The Advisory Board is really coming of age - it is becoming more and more effective with every meeting, contributing more resources to the support of the Observatory and playing a critical role in our fund raising campaigns. Our major topic of discussion on Wednesday was planning for a major event in late September targeted at attracting a significant increase in membership of the Board - as our visibility on the public stage improves, it is time to try for a significant growth spurt...
Lamont Weekly Report, May 28 2010
The week was consumed by the annual marathon session with the Associate Directors on Tuesday and Wednesday, finalizing the merit review process for all the research Staff. As always this was a grueling task - looking at everyone's accomplishments one-by-one - but important and it is always enlightening. I just wish that the pool of funds for raises was more than the measly 2 per cent that is in fact available. I understand full well that especially after the essential
non-existence of raises last year, that this is a hard pill to swallow. It has to get better next year...
Lamont Weekly Report, May 21, 2010
We held the seventh annual Mentoring Award event earlier this afternoon - there were seven excellent nominees for the award - all of whom deserve recognition and thanks for the positive impact they have on the Observatory. The nominees were Nick Christie-Blick, Ed Cook, Sid Hemming, Juerg Matter, Naomi Naik, Adam Sobel and Maya Tolstoy. The selection Committee chaired by Chris Zappa had a tough time selecting one awardee from this list of great nominees, but as those of you who attended the ceremony this afternoon already know - this year's awardee was Adam Sobel of the Ocean and Climate Physics Division. Many thanks to Chris Zappa and his committee for leading this process and especially thanks to Alexey Kaplan for stepping in to help out this afternoon while Chris was out of town...
Lamont Weekly Report, May 14, 2010
I hope everyone saw Chris Zappa's recent announcement about this year's Mentoring Award - many congratulations to all the excellent nominees. Please join us (a week today) for the ceremony at which this year's awardee will be identified - 4pm Friday 21st May in the Monell Auditorium - reception to follow. A cash prize of $2000 comes along with the certificate of recognition - so it is a big deal!!...
Lamont Weekly Report, May 7, 2010
ExCom this morning turned into a marathon, lasting almost three hours.
Three new appointments as DARS were considered and discussion topics ranged from addressing the neglected issue of the important role that Project Scientists play in the Observatory to consideration of new formal policies to improve the quality of mentoring that we provide for post docs. Jim Cochran took over from Chris Small as the MG&G representative and Donna Shillington replaced Andreas Thurnherr as the Junior Staff rep...
Lamont Weekly Report, April 30, 2010
onathan Cole (ex Provost of CU) stopped by Lamont briefly on Wednesday - it was great to see him again and talk about his recently published book on the great American research universities. I continue to try to get him to come here and give a talk about this.
Wednesday night Allied Bernstein (the investment banking company) hosted a development event for us at their headquarters in mid-town - Peter Kelemen and Peter deMenocal were the stars - they again did a great job of engaging non-climate scientists (who are important decision-makers) in insightful discussions about the future of our planet...
Lamont Weekly Report, April 23, 2010
It has been a very busy week - nine different appointments in my diary for today - but at least they were all here at Lamont. Yesterday I had to make two separate trips downtown - the first was for the annual formal budget presentation with the Provost (which is always so much fun), and the second was for the last EI Faculty meeting of the academic year - at which the keynote speaker was... the Provost...
Lamont Weekly Report, April 16, 2010
The Monell Auditorium was essentially full last Sunday afternoon for our annual alumni lecture, that followed a lunch to honor many of Lamont's good friends and supporters. Jerry McManus was the speaker and he did a superb job of educating the highly diverse audience on the intricacies of ocean currents and climate change. This Sunday Gisela Winckler will have the stage for her talk that is titled "Dust in the Wind: Dust, Stardust and Earth's Climate System"...
Lamont Weekly Report, April 9, 2010
while simultaneously grappling with the realities of getting our research vessel, Langseth, out of the shipyard in Portland Oregon and through all the necessary Coast Guard inspections so she can sail west across the Pacific to begin her 2010 field season. Ship operations are such a joy...
It is our Alumni Spring Pubic Lecture this Sunday - Jerry McManus is giving a talk with the acutely alliterative title - Currents, Conveyors and Climate Change. This is very timely in many ways - because a week today we celebrate 50 years as a DEES Professor for the father of the conveyor belt idea - Wally Broecker. ..
