We are busily preparing for a week long 'Business Systems Review' by NSF managers and consultants of our Marine Operations later this month. A tremendous amount of preparatory work is needed involving practically every administrative segment of the University - an important and potentially valuable process. We are focused upon this
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. This promises to be a great event - President Bollinger and many senior leaders of the university will attend - so starting at 2pm on Friday the Monell
auditorium will be packed. If you want a seat arrive early! Everyone is invited. Because we know there will be insufficient room in Monell, the event will be broadcast live into the main seminar room in Comer - so if you cannot find a seat in Monell, please walk over to Comer and watch from there. (Because of fire regulations we will have to be tough about stopping folks from over crowding the auditorium.)
I try to avoid talking about grants that individual PIs receive in these reports - because if I did there would be space to speak of little else - we win so many excellent awards. But I will make an exception here because we received one of the extremely rare 'Accomplishment Based Renewals' - from NSF. Maya Tolstoy won one entitled "Temporal Evolution of Hydrothermal and Volcanic Processes at the East Pacific Rise From Microearthquake Data" This is exceptional - NSF give very very few of these awards. They are granted, not based upon work you plan to do, but upon the excellence of the work you have already completed. Many congratulations to Maya.
And also many congratulations to DEES graduate student Kaori Tsukui for winning a prestigious Outstanding Student paper award from the American Geophysical Union. Very well done, Kaori.
As summer ends and spring returns, have a great weekend,
- Mike