News flash! Tony Del Genio and Peter deMenocal have been named AGU Fellows for 2012! (Also named: Lamont graduates Ana Ravelo and Paul Wessel.)
MB-System aficionados held a two-day workshop in the Worzel Room this week, hosted by Dale Chayes and Dave Caress (ex-Lamont, now MBARI). In case you don’t know, MB-System is the open source software originally developed at Lamont for processing and displaying a host of underway marine imaging data; over the years it has been supported by NSF, NOAA, the Packard Foundation (through MBARI) and others. A new NSF proposal is in preparation.
Capital projects update: The Comer Ultra-Clean Lab is about done, pending resolution of some air handling issues. Demolition on the second floor of the New Core Lab (Biogeoscience Labs, funded partially by NSF) will commence at the end of February, with construction tracking to start by the end of March. B&G will be renovating parts of Seismology and the seminar wing of Old Geochem over the next few months. We have begun or will soon begin planning meetings for 1st floor space in the New Core Lab and the Marine Bio wing of the Seismology-Marine Biology building.
I’ve asked Doug Shearer to take over day-to-day management of the Computer Support Group and Mahdad Parsi to assist on budgeting and planning. Bob Bookbinder is continuing part-time to ease the transition. We soon will convene an IT infrastructure planning committee to provide input to the broader Lamont planning effort.
Please mark you calendars for the May 4 Jardetzky Lecture to be given by Ellen Mosley-Thompson from the Byrd Center at Ohio State. Also, the Vetlesen awards committee is in final discussions, with an announcement hopefully within the next month.
Kevin Griffin and I had a great discussion with Bill Schuster, Executive Director of the Black Rock Forest Consortium, about ways to increase research and education collaborations with Lamont. More to come.
Most of you have probably heard that Bob Detrick has accepted the position of head of NOAA/OAR. There are searches also underway for Assistant Director of NSF/GEO and Division Director of NSF/GEO/EAR. These are all very important positions for our community, so please work your contacts during the process.
Lamont Post-doc Fellow and new grad student selection processes are both now open. Please review applications as needed/requested. We have found that timely review matters.
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