LAMONT WEEKLY REPORT

February 21, 2003

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR

P.O. Box 1000, 61 Route 9W Palisades, New York 10964

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<> REPORT SUMMARY <>

<> Reporting Safety and Security Issues <>

<> Letter from the Director <>

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<> REPORTING SAFETY AND SECURITY ISSUES


A method for confidentially reporting issues that you feel are important to the safety and security of yourself, this institution and your co-workers has been installed on the Administrative Web Pages.

To access this form you will have to click on the Administrative Web Pages, click on Communications, Property, Safety then go to (Confidential Reporting of Safety/Security Issues form) the form can be completed anonymously.  If filling a report anonymously please give as much detail as possible pertaining to your concerns without jeopardizing your anonymity.

You can use this form to report any and all issues concerning safety and security and the information supplied will be kept in the strictest confidence.  Of course if you wish, you can still use the phone (ext. 8822 or 8860) or e-mail (ray@admin.ldeo.columbia.edu) to report any issues to this office.  Your call or e-mail will also be treated confidentially if so requested.


<> LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

Please come to the Monell Auditorium at 3:30 pm on Monday, February 24th. There will be a very brief award ceremony, followed by a keynote lecture by Bob Anderson entitled 'The Efficiency of the Southern Ocean's Biological Pump', followed by a reception. All are welcome.  We will recognize three recent awards to Lamonters - Gerard Bond's Ewing Medal, Taro Takahashi's election as a fellow of AGU and Mark Cane's Cody Medal from Scripps - and then I will present Lamont's first Director's Award for Outstanding Research Performance to Bob Anderson.  Please come to participate in our recognition of colleague's substantial accomplishments.

As has been previously announced, John Mutter has taken on the role as Deputy Director of the Earth Institute. This challenging position requires a substantial time-investment on John's part, and while he plans to continue his primary role as a Professor in DEES, he has decided that it is not practical to continue as Executive Deputy Director of the Observatory. Therefore, effective March 1st John will end his long and highly valued tenure as a member of the Observatory's Directorate. The leadership role that John has played for almost a decade has been critical in advancing our Institution during a period of multiple changes in leadership, and for this we are all heavily indebted to John.

Obviously this is NOT a good bye - he will maintain an office on campus - will continue his teaching and research activities on this campus, and will retain a position on the Executive Committee in order to insure co-ordination with Morningside. And we all wish him well in his new position at the Earth Institute.

We should all be especially appreciative of the efforts of the Buildings and Grounds folks earlier this week, for their great efforts to keep the Observatory open and functioning through the snowstorm.  When the decision was taken before 6:00 am on Monday morning to close the Observatory for the day, Dick Greco and his crew had already been at work since midnight and had determined that given the rate of snow fall and the high winds causing drifts, they could not keep up. Nevertheless they worked through the day, and at around 8:30 pm Monday night we decided that we could open safely on Tuesday providing Dick brought his folks back into work at 5:00 am to clear the parking areas. Working along with Dick were Wayne Went, Bruce Baez, Herb Muench, Eric Soto, Kevin Sullivan, Joe Valenti, Hector Vazquez, Doug Yano and Bob Daly - thank you to you all. While we were snowbound at home, or digging out our own driveways, these folks were at Lamont, away from their families, plowing the snow, enabling us to return to work on Tuesday.

Apologies to all who patiently sat in the Monell auditorium awaiting the real time video feed of the Sachs-Sorros-Stiglitz debate - technical problems downtown could not be overcome at the last minute. We will be receiving a tape of the whole thing in the near future and will make that available.

Lamont has been host to many visiting scientists, and we appreciate and enjoy the benefits of being able to closely interact with leading scientist on our campus for an extended period of time. I am very happy that currently we are host to one of the major geochemists of our days, Albrecht Hofmann, who is the Director of the Department of Geochemistry at the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Chemie in Mainz, Germany. Al's research focuses on mantle geochemistry and dynamics. Al is recipient of AGU's Hess Medal and the Goldschmidt Medal of the Geochemical Society, he is a Fellow of the AGU and a Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the current president of the European Association of Geochemistry, the past president of the European Union of Geosciences, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Geochemical Society.
Al will stay at Lamont until the end of May 2003. He has an office in the Geochemistry building (room 58, phone 8712).

Have a great weekend,


- Mike
 

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