We held the seventh annual Mentoring Award event earlier this afternoon - there were seven excellent nominees for the award - all of whom deserve recognition and thanks for the positive impact they have on the Observatory. The nominees were Nick Christie-Blick, Ed Cook, Sid Hemming, Juerg Matter, Naomi Naik, Adam Sobel and Maya Tolstoy. The selection Committee chaired by Chris Zappa had a tough time selecting one awardee from this list of great nominees, but as those
of you who attended the ceremony this afternoon already know - this year's awardee was Adam Sobel of the Ocean and Climate Physics Division. Many thanks to Chris Zappa and his committee for leading this process and especially thanks to Alexey Kaplan for stepping in to help out this afternoon while Chris was out of town.
I spent Wednesday in DC with Dave Goldberg at meetings with the other leaders of the organizations that run the US component of the Ocean Drilling Program - renewal of the program is coming up in 2013 and there is a lot of work to do to make the case that this long-running and vital activity should be renewed. There was no way of getting the attention of agency folks this week however - in DC everyone is consumed by the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Lamont has been
getting some good media exposure on this topic with Tim Crone of MG&G emerging as our new star of TV and radio. It is sad how slow and how poorly co-ordinated any comprehensive monitoring and research effort is proving to be. We should be trying to learn from this disaster.
Harry Elderfield from Cambridge passed on a wonderful tid bit earlier this week. The UK is honoring ten great scientists on a new series of postage stamps - Newton, Rutherford, Boyle - all the usual suspects - but also Nick Shackleton (winner of the Vetlesen medal a few years back and close friend to Lamont). And the stamp actually has pictures of radiolaria on it as well as Nick himself of course - with his trade-mark voluminous side burns.
A number of Lamonters will be inducted into CU's 25 year club in a week or so: David Goldberg, Diane Hicks, Paul Olsen, Ray Sambrotto, Steward Sutherland, Stephen Zebiak, Stan Ziegler (First Mate on Langseth). Thank you to all - this place would not be the same without you!
Have a great weekend,
- Mike