We received excellent news at the beginning of the week - our letter of intent to an NIST Announcement of Opportunity to help complete the fund raising for the Comer Building was accepted and we were invited to submit a proposal. As with all the Stimulus Funding opportunities it has a very short fuse - an August 10th deadline - but once we get the NIH proposal for over $8M for a new Exposure Assessment and Environmental Biogeochemistry Laboratory Building out the door on
Monday, then this will be our next target. The NIST program is on behalf of all the agencies within the Department of Commerce (DoC), so we will be playing the NOAA climate science card (because NOAA is part of DoC), and this should give us a strong case.
The NOAA funded program on Abrupt Climate Change within a Warming World ran a three day long symposium Wednesday through Friday that brought several luminaries of climate research to the campus, and I was disappointed that my schedule allowed me to attend for only a few hours.
This morning there was another event in the Research Life series - this time focused upon the art of communicating science to the general public and media. Thanks to generous financial support from the Earth Institute we were able to bring an expert from AAAS to run an effective and highly interactive program that I believe was greatly appreciated by all.
I hope everyone is enjoying the glorious summer weather.
Have a great weekend,
- Mike