Lamont Weekly Report, March 26, 2010

Busy week with the huge 'State of the Planet' conference going on down town, as well as the formal 'kick-off' meeting with Program Managers from NIST marking the start of the project to construct the worlds largest and most capable ultra clean lab for Geochemistry in the Comer Building. NIST is providing us with ~$1.4M to support this.

Michelle Moody-Adams - the new Dean of Columbia College - visited the campus for the first time - met with a group of undergraduates, had a tour and talked with a small leadership group. As always with these visits - never enough time - but at least she knows where we are
now.

If you check your 'In box' for March 19th you will find an email from me announcing the opportunity to receive seed funding from the Lamont Advisory Board Innovation Fund.  The deadline is coming up - a week today Friday April 2nd - send us your best proposals!

As many of you know Dave Goldberg has been helping me for over a year with a reorganization of the Marine Office - the highlight of which has been the appointment of Sean Higgins as the new Director of the Office of Marine Operations. Dave's role is now being formalized, and for the first time since Denny Hayes stepped down 8-9 years ago, we will again have a permanent Associate Director.  Dave is now not only head of the Borehole Research Group, but also Associate Director of the Marine Division.

It was another long ExCom this morning, but we made substantial progress. The formal messages went out from my office today to all the Doherty research staff presenting the opportunity to transfer over to the Lamont Research Professor track effective July 1st. So... yes, it is really happening.

Have a great weekend,

Mike