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.

I met with President Bollinger, Provost Steele, Robert Kasdin, Nick Dirks and a few other CU leaders on Thursday at the President's home to discuss CU strategies for increased visibility and effectiveness in Washington DC, naturally a topic of vital importance to Lamont. It was an important discussion which I hope will result in some new approaches to this critical issue.

This afternoon we held the second of this year's Research Life Series seminars, the subject was PIs responsibilities in the management and oversight of federal grants, with presentations by Edie Miller and Sally Odland. One of the realizations resulting from this session is that we need a simple glossary of terms for our post docs and junior staff.  We all use this research admin jargon (e.g. ICR, effort reporting, DARTS, cost sharing) and expect everyone to know what we are talking about.  We will work on building a simple glossary of these terms to help our junior colleagues assimilate themselves more quickly into the bureaucratic morass that is modern-day federal research funding. Next Friday Ajit Subramaniam and I will talk about Washington DC and how the funding agencies actually work (really!). And we are hoping sometime this fall to hold another one of our sessions on media training for scientists.

I cannot remember whether I have told you this before, but anyway, I only just saw the real thing earlier this week:  a new English 1st Class postage stamp featuring the unmistakable visage of our good friend and recent Vetlesen Medal winner Nick Shackleton96 very impressive.

I guess it going to be another warm weekend, keep cool.

- Mike