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