Checkout the following url if you want to see a collection of excellent photographs from Wally's 50th celebration last week:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/events/wally-broecker-event We are still receiving complements about this great event - I hope soon we will have the video up on our website too, so everyone can see Richard Alley's great original song again.
Jonathan 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.
Kuheli Dutt organized and hosted a tremendous networking event for women scientists on Friday - it was structured around a lunch in the Worzel Room of Lamont Hall and attracted ~20 women geoscientists from all over the East Coast who met with and talked to around 40 of our own scientists post docs and grad students. So the room was packed.
This was clearly so successful that undoubtedly we will have to do it (or something like it) again in the near future.
A week today - Friday May 7th - DEES will host the second annual Storke Lecture - 330pm in the Monell Auditorium. The speaker will be the writer, activist and energy analyst Randy Udall, and his talk is entitled "The Carbon Shuffle and the Energy Challenge". And there will be a special reception afterwards - so please join us.
I think everyday but one this week I have had to make the pilgrimage downtown to participate in the NSF "Business Systems Review" of the Office of Marine Operations. About ten NSF folks (including some contractors) spent the week questioning and interviewing and looking into every aspect of shore-based marine operations - finance, purchasing, management, HR etc etc. Essentially all of the managers from admin have been involved, so if response time from admin has been slow for you this past week, then this is why. Suffice it to say that it was not an enjoyable experience for anyone.
It has been a tough week. Ready for the weekend. Enjoy the sunshine,
- Mike