Whenever I talk about Lamont I always try to remember to emphasize the essential role that our graduate students play in maintaining the quality of of everything we do. We received further testament to how exceptional our students are when we learned that for the SECOND time this year an AGU Outstanding Student paper award will be presented to one of DEES finest, Karen Wovkulich - for her paper entitled "Arsenic remediation enhancement through chemical additions to pump and treat operations" that was presented at the Fall Meeting in San Francisco. I doubt seriously that another institution in the US has received two of these awards this year. This is excellent - and many congratulations
to Karen.
I am sure many of you noticed the emphasis that Tim Killeen (GEO AD at NSF) placed during his talk here last week on the use of 'Dear Colleague' letters as a way of 'steering' proposals in certain directions. It is clear that Tim sees this as one of his primary tools to direct resources where he wants them to go. So this means we should take very seriously the appearance on the NSF web site of two such letters - check them out if you have interest. The subjects are:
Environment, Society, and the Economy (ESE)
Emerging Topics in Biogeochemical Cycles (ETBC)
It has been another busy week. Still obsessing about budget problems while meeting with several candidates for new positions, striving to make progress with the EI Appointments subcommittee, sitting on the Board of the newly formed NY Marine Science Consortium, engaging in two hour long conference calls on the evolving plans for the $400M NSF
Ocean Observatories Initiative and trying to finalize decisions on recruitment for the senior paleoceanography position.
So it is good that it is Friday. But as I am going to have all three daughters at home for the weekend (two with accompanying male admirers), maybe Monday will not seem such a bad idea.
Have a great weekend,
- Mike