I'm very pleased to have Bill Easterling here. He's the Assistant Director for Geoscience at NSF. And before that he was, are you an IPA, I mean you're on loan, right? I am IPA. Okay, so he was a dean at Penn State University and a professor there in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. And so I'll just turn it over to Bill. Thank you, everyone. And sorry to be a few minutes late, NSF now is located, as you probably know, across the river and now south, almost all the way to the southern edge of Alexandria. And with the metro out for the next two months it makes travel into the district just as unpredictable as the climate. So it's always good to come get where you're going within five minutes of when you wanted to be there. So today I wanted to spend a little time in the beginning just talking about some of the things we have underway at NSF broadly and specifically in the earth sciences and geosciences at NSF that I believe relate to the task at hand here with this committee. And let me just assure you the work that you're doing here is absolutely critical to where we would like to take the geosciences and earth sciences program at NSF. And I frankly couldn't be happier with the quality of this committee when I saw it being assembled. I thought this is truly the right people at the right time for what we've put on the table for you. I know many of us go back a few years and I look very much forward to the new insights and perspectives that we'll get from this group going forward. So over the next few minutes I'd like to reflect on the importance of partnerships as the source. Okay. Thanks. Just the importance of partnerships is the source of cooperation and collaboration across the earth sciences, the geosciences directorate and then NSF broadly. Before I begin I also want to thank Lena to my left and Nisa Call and Beth Zelensky for assembling the story that I'm about to tell. I have a prepared text and as an academic I kind of bristle at, you know, being harnessed into a prepared text. But trust me it's the only way that I'll get done in time and leave time for questions. I won't be able to resist in spite of what I just said, deviating and elaborating on some points. And so to my handlers here, Jim, if you'll please let me know if I begin to eat into the time that you really wanted to spend in questions and answers. So John Muir got it right when he wrote, when we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. The fact is dynamic partnerships, whether between researchers, disciplines, institutions or sectors are pervasive models that ensure rapid advances on some of the toughest scientific challenges that we face. Partnerships not only enable the sharing of knowledge, resources, ingenuity, they connect science with society and I'd be more than happy to talk with you about how important it is now, even in the institutions that support fundamental curiosity driven science to stay connected with society and the work that we do. Today partnerships are not only transforming our communities, but our notion of science itself. They're bringing every participant and every discipline into an increasingly interconnected future. I will say it several times over the next several minutes. The Earth Sciences Division has embraced the power of partnerships and I'll give some examples to illustrate that. To begin it's important to point out what almost all of you, probably all of you around the table already knew. The National Science Foundation is in essence a partnership of partnerships. We actively encourage, support and facilitate those unions that Muir talked about in his vastly interconnected universe. There's not another agency with NSS capacity and skill to promote and manage complex systems and I want to give you some examples to illustrate that. The connections that we can foster enable partners to work on projects that are too large, too complex or too expensive for one group to tackle on their own. They allow each partner to do what it does best while remaining a part of something much more diverse and comprehensive in scale. Today I'll give a few examples that illustrate this concept in action from NSS Geosciences portfolio and we'll start local and move up to the international in scale. An enormous body of research details the importance of a diverse and inclusive scientific community. In fact I've seen it projected several times that the Geosciences workforce that we project into the future will not find all of the people that we need to be in it if we are not successful in increasing the diversity of the Geosciences. This was an enormous challenge when I was dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State and I suspect it's true at every single one of your institutions. I started out as dean 12 years ago and one of the places where I wished I had made more progress was in diversifying the Geosciences. Geosciences cross cutting opportunities for leadership in diversity or gold as we call it supports a different approach to increase participation and belonging. One supported project we call ASPIRE is truly worth its weight in gold. This project supports mobile working groups to tackle local environmental change and severe weather risk to target and benefit communities most affected. This team studied the fragile Pearl Harbor aquifer threatened by agriculture climate change and urban sprawl and these projects are co-reviewed and co-funded by program officers across all of Geo including the front office and each of the divisions. A foundation wide program Geopaths is improving STEM undergraduate education pathways in the U.S. Geopaths taps the nation's diverse student talent pool interested in pursuing degrees in the Geosciences. These projects engage students in authentic career relevant experiences like these college students participating in the Geo Launchpad internship. They are surveying the St. Mary's Glacier near Idaho Springs, Colorado using GPS. Now let's take a second just to celebrate the 80 recently announced Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers or PCAS awards supported by NSF. The president kicked off our nation's Independence Day celebration this year with a press release announcing our winners. Most of those awardees are supported by the directorate for Geosciences. Here's a photo of a ghost forest I borrowed from Dr. Matthew Kierwan one of the winners funded by the Earth Sciences Geomorphology and Land Use Dynamics program. Dr. Kierwan uses Ghost Forests as an indicator of sea level rise which is a major research priority in the Geosciences. Now let me turn to a new program that I know you want to hear more about and I'm going to spend some time describing this to you and that's our Coastlines and People or COPE program. It's Cross Agency, it's Interdisciplinary and as I said we call it Coastlines and People or COPE and it really does demonstrate Geos especially Earth Sciences commitment to large-scale convergence research. Geo is leading the way in collaboration with several other directorates. The evolution of COPE is in itself a textbook story of cross-directorate cooperation. When I arrived at NSF a little over two years ago I started a conversation with the division directors across the Earth Sciences, across the Geosciences and we looked at what stands as our kind of strategic roadmap in Geo and asked the question what are the next questions that we haven't fully addressed or that are just over the horizon that we ought to be paying some attention to and starting new initiatives to initiate and in that conversation we started to hear common sets of interests across the divisions, sea level rise, understanding why it varies as much geographically. The characteristics of severe storms is they move out of a marine into a terrestrial environment especially as they interact with highly urbanized land covers. We heard a lot about better understanding of trans-ocean land tectonic activity and how to better predict earthquakes, major earthquakes and tsunamis and it began to become very clear that these were all geophysical hazards in and around coastlines and especially highly urbanized coastlines and that became the basis, the foundation for what turned into a cross NSF-wide initiative to try to better understand these hazards and to integrate the engineering sciences and the social sciences, the life sciences to understand how best to take information we learn from these geohazards to make a more resilient coastal community and set of ecosystems and a more resilient urban infrastructure as a result and do this in a highly integrated way. So the earth sciences are providing key leadership in COPE and in fact one of the early co-leaders of the COPE initiative was EAR's Jen Wade. COPE's scientific vision is a set of research hubs that enable geoscientists to collaborate with engineers, biologists, social scientists and cyber scientists better to understand and predict geophysical hazards occurring on densely populated coastlines and to improve the resiliency of coastal infrastructure in the people who live there. So the dear colleague letter and current capacity building proposals are being co-reviewed and managed from program directors from almost all the directorates and offices at NSF and we can see that list here. We've also had a fruitful conversation with other agencies including NOAA, DOE and USGS about this focus area. And I'm about to travel up to the NOAA offices to meet with Nicole LeBouf who's the assistant administrator for ocean services to begin to put together the teeth of a collaboration with NOAA on funding proposals jointly in COPE. So this program's development is timely but it's extremely important for the nation. Climate change is raising sea levels while also changing the intensity and severity of major coastal storms. These changes threaten two-thirds of the world's mega cities. A mega city is a city of at least 10 million people. There are about 25 of them on earth and easily two-thirds or perhaps more are located on or very close to coastlines. This wave crashes on a boardwalk in the densely populated city of Mumbai that you can see on the slide behind me. This financial heart of India is the world's fastest growing major economy. Military installations are many of them are along coastlines and are extremely vulnerable to all manner of geophysical hazards. Exposure to climate shocks like heat waves, drought, hurricanes and flooding also threatens at least half of all U.S. military installations located within coastal zones. There are more than 1700 bases worldwide that are near coastlines. Let me illustrate the importance of coastal population growth in the U.S. and why that's such an important ingredient in coke. The U.S. population continues to migrate to coastal areas. This map illustrates homes built in the U.S. before 1950. The darkest maroon areas illustrate the highest concentration of U.S. households who live mostly in the U.S. heartland. Urban sociologists and demographers have shown us a very important trend after 1950. The maroon areas now depict a mass migration to U.S. coasts. From 1970 to 2010, the population of coastal counties increased by almost 40 percent by the latter third of this century. Looking worldwide, nearly 75 percent, three-quarters of all of the world's population will live within 100 kilometers of coastlines. Yes, okay. Yeah, I can hear it sort of in the background. We're still working out the kinks in the systems at NSF, and this is one of the problems his feedback on. Well said. Well, one last quick map. This one overlays no as predicted sea level rise and coastal risk data on top of the last census. The darker the blue, the more people. If you look along the coastlines, the red areas are most susceptible to rising sea levels. Orange and yellow areas are at medium risk, but are in no way out of the woods. The take-home message is that nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population today needs to be ready for the very real and very personal impacts of sea level rise. I think that's very clear that anyone in this room would accept. COPE stands as an opportunity for interdisciplinary research on really some truly wicked problems. NSF supported four scoping workshops across the U.S. to connect academics with local stakeholders to inform the development of the program. This collage of images from the workshops illustrates how fun and engaging idea labs can be. A dear colleague letter soon followed the workshops in which NSF encouraged ideas to continue to build capacity and infrastructure research and education. The response, in my view, was higher than NSF had expected, and in fact, COPE really has seemed to have struck a nerve with the science community. We continue to get much more response than we even anticipated out at the edges of what we expected in COPE. So there's really a lot of pent-up demand to try to understand these problems. Given only a month's time to respond, we received hundreds of ideas in our dear colleague letter. Program directors and management from all the participating directorates are collectively reviewing submissions and making funding recommendations as we sit here. Programs like COPE aren't just created out of thin air. They have legacies and they're grounded in a rich tradition in the geosciences and geoprisms is a textbook case. Geoprisms provided us with decades to practice co-management of programs. Geoprisms is an earth and ocean science partnership, and the acronym is short for geodynamic processes at rifting and subducting margins. Just as an aside, little did I know when I was still dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and state that my colleague, Damien Safer, when he became head of geoprisms would be basically laying out the groundwork for something that I would then inherit at NSF and really be quite proud of. Geoprisms has led to groundbreaking work, as I'm sure most of you know, regarding the architecture of continental margins at fault lines, including what controls geohazards such as earthquakes and volcanoes. Here, University of Alaska Fairbanks Professor Jeff Benowitz and graduate student Kaelin Davis collect five million-year-old volcanic ash deposits from the Rangel volcanic arc deposited in the Alaska Range. The RV Secouliac has been paramount in distributing and recovering electromagnetic receivers deployed on the seafloor, allowing scientists from 11 institutions to study the Aleutian arc. The arc forms the northern part of the Ring of Fire, as I know you all know, very common pre-Lem's question, where many of Alaska's 130 volcanoes are located. We don't have to travel far to reach the Pacific Coast outcrops on UN Alaska Island. Dr.  I think they're pretty impressive. The modeled appearance of the pillow lavas in this lower outcrop were formed prior to the effects of crustal thickening by magnetism and tectonics. These processes eventually led to the emergence of the large islands that we see in the eastern Aleutians today. And let me move on to another major program that GEO really had as much leadership as any of the directorates, and that was our innovations at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems. It's another partnership working to understand and improve the nation's interconnected resources. I personally have worked in the area of climate change and food security, but I was always haunted by the fact that while we often dealt with the limiting factor of water globally as climate changes, we didn't really make the connections as explicit as we needed to to energy systems. And they are such highly connected parts of a whole that that has been a real shortcoming in our integrated assessments of the consequences of climate change. And infuse is truly one of the first, maybe the first, studies or initiatives to look at this as a interconnected system. The implementation of infuse was grounded in a strong partnership between NSF and USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, NIFA, NIFA. And for those of you who stay up on Washington politics, you may know that NIFA is in the process of being moved out of Washington to some location out in the country. And that's yet to be fully finalized, but it will will send certainly a shockwave through some of our partnerships, but we will continue to reach out and work with with our partners at USDA. Infuse-supported research led to greater focus on systems thinking and approaches. That's that's that's a phrase that you hear very often at NSF is systems analysis systems thinking. Just an aside, we are truly the only science agency in in the Washington constellation that focuses especially on understanding the interactions between sectors and and truly trying to understand systems as systems of systems. The integration of the social systems with the scientific systems is a trademark of what we do in infuse and also in other programs across the the foundation single and multi-institution collaboration. Any of you who have been PIs on NSF projects recognize the importance of collaboration with your with colleagues at other universities and research institutions. And discipline interdisciplinary diverse teams are also characteristics. So let's broaden the reach with a couple of quick international examples of of collaboration at NSF. NSF and the US Israel by National Science Foundation have a memorandum of understanding on research cooperation in place. We just hosted a team from Israel back last month to reinforce that memorandum of understanding and in short this means that US researchers receive support from NSF and Israeli researchers receive funding from the B NSF to cooperate. In short I'm sorry it's working well for Dr. James Smith at Princeton. He's working with Israeli scientists in two geographically distinct settings to better understand the physical mechanisms controlling extreme floods in about 50 watersheds. The new river floods out of its banks in the background and the flooding model data from the work is in set. A wide range of users including emergency management offices regional planning programs and flood forecasting offices are interested in these results so it has real world applicability. These researchers submitted a single collaborative proposal that underwent review at NSF as the lead agency. All the geo divisions participate in this agreement including of course EAR. If we move around the globe to the east Utah State University Geoscientist Dr. Tammy Rittenauer works with scientists in southern Taiwan to explore the interaction of climate driven erosion, tectonics and topography. NSS partner for this funding is the Department of Natural Sciences and Sustainable Development of the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology. We just hosted the minister the science minister of Taiwan at NSF last week. I spoke in fact at length about the activities of this committee to to the minister. He was quite interested. The Division of Earth Sciences will evaluate the outcomes of this partnership agreement by analyzing the number of proposals, success rates and other metrics for physical years 19 and 20. So coming up these partnership examples demonstrate how effectively and efficiently geo's program managers collaborate and cooperate. Program staff regularly suggest reviewers and panelists to each other. They co-manage joint proposals during panels and they provide co-funding for the best and brightest ideas. That's the NSF way. Program directors and management from the divisions interact often outside of the proposal sharing space as well. They serve together on committees across geo and NSF. It is simply not true that if a proposal is considered by two different programs that it is less likely to be funded. That is urban legend. In fact the opposite is true. We encourage PIs to email program directors of the relevant programs at the same time. This helps NSF staff to confer and to provide the best and most efficient response. Let me digress for a moment and really hammer this point home. We at NSF have spent a lot of time exploring ways to manage the proposals that we receive, recognizing that we've been flooded with proposals. Workloads are very high but as we have experimented with the no deadlines approach which the Geosciences Directorate pioneered. We have seen a drop in the number of proposals and by any of our measures we've seen no corresponding drop in the quality of the proposals that we've received so we continue to fund very, very good science. But what this has created is even more time for program officers to thoughtfully handle the proposals that we receive that may not seem fully appropriate for the original address C but could be supported elsewhere in the foundation and to work with program officers in other parts of the of the directorate and sometimes in other directorates to make sure that the proposal is given a fair hearing and we often join together in the funding of proposals in that manner. So you see the mouse here and it's my cue to say that to be successful and to advance society and technology activities require partnerships at every level from PI to program director organization to organization and from discipline to discipline. We recognize the value of information sharing planning and networking and we're strong supporters of workshops conferences ideas labs and countless other collaborative and interdisciplinary endeavors. Networks advances science and technology and bridge gaps among the disciplines. Often the most fertile fields of discovery and transformative ideas are found at the blurry lines where the disciplines intersect and I know most of you have worked in that blurry area. That brings us full circle to our newest cross NSF thrust and that's in the area of convergence science. It's one of NSF's 10 big ideas NSF and its partners in the scientific community use convergence to define a vision for a future where researchers across disciplines collaborate to solve grand challenges. Today you can find NSF support for convergence science in many of our long-standing programs but we're stepping up our investment in this area. We're providing funding for convergence research that falls outside of NSF's current programs and initiatives. We want to see what happens when multidisciplinary teams apply creativity and ingenuity to come up with research questions that we once thought unimaginable. Now some of you may hear that and think that I just defined interdisciplinary research. That's certainly how I thought about it when I first heard the term convergence science described to me. That's truly a related idea but convergence is much more specific. It requires starting efforts to solve specific compelling problems with deep intentional integration across the disciplines from the very beginning. That word intentional is important. We're not talking about a geoscientist producing research and then collaborating with an engineer or a social scientist to expand on it or taking existing models in one area and just thinking of clever ways to link that model to another model in another area and saying that that has achieved interdisciplinary insights. We're talking about purposely bringing together intellectually diverse researchers and even stakeholders from outside of the traditional research community to frame questions and to figure out how to answer them and it brings to bear an arsenal of powerful new research methodologies and this is another key trait to convergence science. These are methods such as data mining geospatial information analysis and GPS technology just to name a few. This will be important as we tackle some of society's most pressing questions like how to deal with a rapidly warming Arctic. It's no surprise that navigating the new Arctic is another one of NSF's big ideas. Navigating the new Arctic supports research at the nexus of natural social and built environments in a rapidly changing Arctic world. Success for this big idea requires international collaboration, interdisciplinary and convergent research and multi-stakeholder involvement. Navigating the new Arctic or NNA for short tackles scientific challenges in the rapidly changing Arctic to inform the economy, security and resilience of the nation. These are major White House priorities and we want to learn not just for the benefit of this nation but for the larger region and the globe. NNA seeks innovations in Arctic observational networks and fundamental convergence science. I'd be happy at the end to talk about some of the really exciting work that we're trying to cultivate in the area of smart observing technologies that give us the opportunity for the first time to actually see what's happening under the ice and observe it and model it. NNA promotes initiatives that empower new research communities. It also diversifies the next generation of Arctic researchers. It integrates the co-production of knowledge and engages partnerships particularly among international stakeholders. Collectively the big the 10 meg ideas will identify and close gaps, push the boundaries of knowledge and we hope we'll seize new opportunities in science. Implementing the big ideas requires strong partnerships across all NSF organizations, across scientific disciplines and communities and across government agencies. A novel structure was developed for reviewing and awarding big idea grants that combines program officers from multiple directorates so that no single directorate controls the awards. That is a truly novel way NSF has developed for evaluating and then finally making the decisions for funding on truly interdisciplinary cross-directorate grants. NSF and GEO will continue to invest in fundamental research so let me assure everyone here that this foray that we have set out on at NSF and big science interdisciplinary programs is just simply part of our portfolio an important part a new part of our portfolio but we will continue to be the agency that you go to when you have when you're just simply curious about something about how the world works and you want some support and you can compel through the merit review process the merits of a grant and then you're off on your own doing deep disciplinary dives into some important questions so that is still part of our portfolio we're not moving away from that we're simply diversifying we'll continue to divest and new technologies observing capabilities I think I made that clear just a few moments ago facilities and data needed to conduct the the earth science that interests us all in this room and also the next generation of scientific and engineering workers the future of the geosciences and earth sciences is in my view on firm foundation and it's built with solid partnerships across the agency and across multiple agencies in multiple countries this way of working will carry science and technology well into the future it has to that's the model that we're all moving toward and thank you again for this opportunity to speak we really truly appreciate all the work that you're putting into this endeavor and I look forward to seeing what this committee produces and hearing its advice so I want to close now and leave time for any discussion or conversation that you'd like to have thank you for listening thank you bill that was very very interesting and we appreciate the time you took to come and speak to us and I'm I imagine there's some questions around the room and so it's open for questions Dennis and then bill thanks the on a small topic the deadlines and the lack of deadlines and proposal you described but that it's actually increased the workload for your program no no other way around it has decreased decreased yeah okay it's been decreased to manage the review thank you it's decreased to manage the review process because there are fewer proposals to to send out for review or to take to panel that what has done is open a space for program directors to be engaged in other types of activities that all alone have been part of their description of their job but because the time sensitive review process needed to take place those activities were not done with as much deep thoughts in some cases or not have time I remember when I got to NSF in 2005 program directors used to go and do site visits to projects and that practice decreased in in 10 15 years because the workload increased now people are having more time to re-engage in kind of in a more mindful way with the community and I think that's what bill was yeah I'm sorry Dennis if I if if I didn't make that clear the the it is very clear to me after two years in my position that I've seen just the overworking of the of the NSF workforce the program officers they really are just racing to stay up and and so as as with all of us when we're you know being worked to the edge of our capacity we have to make important decisions and trade-offs and in it went in within the period in which we were working with deadlines and we had a flood of proposals coming in program officers just didn't have the time to be able to reach out to other parts of the organization and have meaningful conversations I mean they did happen but they were brief and they weren't always effective to try to handle proposals that crossover domains but with the no deadlines in place we are seeing that sort of freeing up of time that allows program officers to do what they really want to do and that's to be responsive and and to handle these proposals as carefully and give it as many give a proposal as many opportunities to be funded as possible given the the strength of the merit review Bill Bill Beatrick yeah I have a couple questions that I think are relatively short but maybe not the first one is that yesterday we heard from NASA our science and we didn't hear from DOE but DOE is also a big player in the things that GEO does I was interested that you describe going to meet with NOAA and working out a plan with them and it's been a discussion of is there an effort underway to connect more with NASA or science and interior or connect more with DOE's programs which have a lot of similarities but they may also have you know a desire to keep separate I mean it's it's because they're their list of seven questions their science interior is very much shared with ours they provide information that NSF scientists produced I was on the USAS decadal survey and it was very clear NSF scientists were describing the goals for the NASA or so there's a very much a loop but you still get the feeling that there's not direct collaboration that there's still a separation is that and my is my impression right and is there an opportunity there to get stronger ties with those two agencies well let me let me address DOE first yeah because I'm I'm still you know warm to the touch from a meeting that I had with Gary Garnark from from DOE who oversees the the climate modeling program at at at Energy and he and I have developed a very strong relationship largely over their mutual interest in in coastlines and people and they they would like to join forces with us and they're particularly interested you may have remembered my mention of of what happens to severe storms as they cross from ocean to land and especially begin to interact with with urban systems they want that new knowledge to be built into some of the high resolution climate models and so we've talked about and are on the edge of committing to a a kind of a joint review program that will fund science in that area in the coastlines and people framework and for NASA I mean I'll let Lena speak specifically to the earth sciences and what we've done with NASA recently but before I before I turn the mic over to her we've certainly worked very closely with NASA on the development and implementing of CubeSats in the upper atmosphere and ionosphere and and and and almost all of our solar terrestrial physics work is closely tied to to NASA we work very closely in the the new CubeSats planning program for geospace sciences with NASA so we're pretty closely linked in that way in Geo. I think you heard yesterday that NASA provides funding for Gage in Africa that's kind of one of the larger facilities in the division and then that kind of is one of them through those facilities we have a lot of fatal conversations because the fatal agencies do use some of our facilities they are to store data or to use the data to meet their mission so we have regular conversations in this phase the fact that you may not see an infused type of partnerships where there is a concrete solicitation that doesn't mean that we don't interact with agencies with some regularity there are formal working groups so some of our program directors or I participate in around town and then there is the informal conversation that many times happens when a proposal arrives and it looks too much like NASA or whatever and then there is a phone call so we do interact with the agencies at the formal and informal level depending on the opportunity they have their missions they may have more fingerprints of a political sense around town and it's pretty much we are an independent agency so we don't see that so the nature of some collaborations may change based on that but we are mandated to always collaborate with other agencies and we don't do it because we have to but we see the benefit to understand the earth and I really like Mary's comment yesterday which will stop talking about NASA researchers and NSF researchers which will talk about assigned researchers and they have different funding opportunities and then we should be talking about how to best advance earth sciences as a whole. Yeah I'll come back around. Yeah thank you Bill for those remarks and Lena for being here again today so one of the things that we heard yesterday there's been a lot of there were a lot of questions and discussion about the role of these integrated activities and what emerged yesterday that was interesting is that NSF views these things like infuse and cope as being these you know new programs that are perhaps short-lived at least in terms of their name but then ultimately drive innovation in the core programs within both EAR and the other divisions and I wonder if you could provide some specific examples you know since infuse is relatively new about how that has sort of changed potentially some of the sort of core solicitations of the core programs in EAR and what your vision for you know when ultimately cope graduates you know how that you know how the core programs things like you know hydrologic sciences or geophysics might sort of look different or might might be you know might innovate to sort of take advantage of and be receptive to some of the new technologies models data theoretical frameworks that might arise from the work that gets funded through cope thanks I mean this is something that we think a lot about is you know we we start out by asking where did we come from and you know what kind of foundation are we building when we launch a new program like infuse and and then we I can't confess that we're always thinking you know next steps that far out that we are trying to anticipate what comes next on on a brand new program but but but we always as programs do begin to start to sunset and and and let me if I could just digress a moment and and talk about sunsetting because it's rare that I go into a review panel and and sit and speak with them that at some point the panelists will ask well why is it that we're getting momentum we're we're building a a cadre of scientists we're building capacity in this important research area and just as we're getting to peak performance NSF pulls the plug and sun sets the program and and you know and I have to say that you know as a as an investigator myself and a dean I asked those questions when I sat on the panels and I couldn't understand the logic but the logic is very simple you know we're always pushing ahead we're always asking new questions you the community are are you know pushing us always to look at what's next over the horizon and in a in a in a nearly flat funding environment we just simply have to make tough choices and and so you know and and we sleep well at night with this I have to add because we we recognize that that we've we start off a new research area and then it gains momentum and and we we we anticipate that there will be other funding opportunities in other parts of the government sometimes industry you know that will pick up where we leave off and then we go off and do what we do best at NSF and that's ask the the you know leading edge questions so in the case of of infuse it's it became very clear to us that that that though the novelty of the program was its linkage of energy water and energy water and food and that it was that novelty of that connection that that we wanted to explore but it it also became clear to us that there are so many un resolved questions in the water sciences area that we really need to go back into water and and and and advance our modeling capabilities and particularly joining the terrestrial environment with and models that represent that environment with the water models and so that's a very natural progression out of infuse it you know I'm giving you a preview of something that we're only really talking about right now we haven't made any real commitments but that is how it works that's how we will move ahead it is likely that we will see something out of NSF that will put the focus on that interface of terrestrial systems and and water systems yeah I must say that this Cope program is really exciting and I think it's a really critical problem that's affecting the country in terms of flooding and sea level rise and effects on urban environments agriculture etc you mentioned the the importance of the military bases which are which are aligned particularly on the coast and also there was a recent article about about 2,500 sites in the united states along the coast that are heavily contaminated and there are all sorts of questions about cycling of these materials so my question is it seems to me there could be some good opportunities to partner for example with department of defense perhaps EPA I wondered in order to keep this program sustained and keep it going I wondered if there'd been any thought given given to those two agencies or other agencies in terms of partnering well the answer is we've given some thought to it don but we haven't really made that critical first gesture to do d at least not under the Cope you know mantle and so you know I take that is just very good advice that we really need to step up our game in that partly because I don't think we've had a lot of interaction historically with do d on issues like this you know it's it's really quite impressive how do d has entered the game on climate change recognizing it as a existential threat and and and really you know taking the issue very seriously and so I suspect that there's a fertile you know field there to to plow but we we haven't gotten there yet unless you know of something that I don't might think about the core of engineers and DOE that might be the place yeah you know I have had conversations in a very brief meeting with the core and and we haven't quite made the the handshake yet yeah I have a question for Lena and one for Bill it related to one to the NASA question I understand that obviously you speak and your partner there are emerging questions however in the fact that the earth is a planet and to understand other planets and habitability we really need to understand the earth first but that are is there my question is is there an actual mechanism for programs that really work together not just using their satellites or their data or whatever but actually say understanding the origin of the earth moon system is critical and that's it it's a joint issue so that's my question for you my question for you Bill related to what Don said in terms of national security and also some of the things we've been thinking about here or I've been thinking about is that and your presentation their sciences seems to me the essential science for this moment in time right sort of the critical moment in time that we're at the existential threat we are uniquely poised as a science because of our intersection of basic and applied and interior and surface and my question for you is how can we help you or are there efforts to do a bit more PR ala NASA for explaining that to the funding body right good question but I'll defer to Lena for your first question yeah so um yes we that is the space nothing prevents us for the program directors and for myself reaching out to NASA and say okay did the understanding of the the moon generation or the early planetary body evolution is essential let's get together let's figure out a mechanism I'm a proponent of ideas lab for example where you commit to some funding level but you bring people to the community that you think are essential to address a particular question and you facilitate them talking about how to go about solving that question and then you evaluate those proposals so there are different mechanisms that we can partner in developing the tools target a particular topic so nothing will prevent us they did I think Mary indicated they run an ideas lab on the original life for example several years ago and for different circumstances um I don't know where the next step was on on that one but we can we can talk about that the importance of the earth sciences um you know this brings me back to some really great lunchtime conversations I used to have with Sue Brantley and Jim Casting and Richard Alley on the on on this this topic of course they were there to lobby the dean but but they had a higher purpose um and we talked about our systems and and that's the key word that that that what I say will pivot on I believe that we're about to see NSF really take hold and and hopefully in the end take ownership of of of the concept of earth system science so and and I recognize that earth system science is not a new concept um I joined Penn State many years ago in part because of its commitment to studying the earth as a system but um I won't I won't be so dramatic as to say that well somehow our system science sort of faded away but I will say that it it kind of receded a little bit in recent years in part because of the tremendous growth and attention given to climate change and climate modeling and and and you know in in in the earth sciences um but um but I I have witnessed and you probably have too um a real resurgence um it that is very organic across the earth system or earth science disciplines surely the solid earth sciences if I might use that to separate that from other earth sciences like the atmospheric sciences um and the oceans but um but but I really believe that we're on the verge of of of a move toward formalizing um earth system science um in in the geosciences at at NSF and um I don't want to go too far because I really think this is a conversation that we're going to have to have with the research community and um and it's not fully developed by any means but but I really see it as a um as as a organizing principle that we will not be able to ignore um we need to have and you know a thoughtful exchange with the community um maybe through a mechanism like uh like this um but but I think that the um that that a move toward earth systems um is an open invitation to um all of the of the earth sciences and it um it puts equal weighting um in understanding the long uh long time scale processes of the um of the earth along with the shorter processes sort of term processes that are regulating the atmospheric chemistry and climate change and um and and all the other aspects of um of the earth system so um so I I won't say that the the earth sciences will take primacy but they will certainly be a crucial partner um in in a move in that direction so um I probably gone further than I had intended in answering that question but um but I wanted to give you a glimpse of what we're thinking about at NSF. Hi Bill, Steve Jacobson from Northwestern University. You may have just answered my question but if you don't mind I'd like to ask it anyway in which case you can say well what I just said but uh first by the way another consequence of the removal of proposal deadlines so I have heard is an increase in the the quality of the proposals they're looking a little bit less rushed and uh last minute so that's another thing to to bear in mind that's good when the quality goes up um looking at uh well the interdisciplinary cross-cutting nature of our sciences of course what a lot of us love about our our field um it also presents a branding difficulty or identity crisis um I was struck by what you said about cope in looking at subduction zone earthquakes and tsunami sea level rise um urban flooding and so on when you said you you had this realization how much of this is geophysics and I think that's really really important given um we hope that our report you know will be read or at least skimmed by by people outside of NSF in Washington and being mindful of the importance of identity in establishing purpose um and uh federal funding I guess I would like to hear a little bit about what your experience in the first two years has been in Washington um about how people view earth science that is sometimes I have the sense that the the like future 15 year old scientist in the country today may have a better idea of what quantum computing or astrophysics is than they do what earth science is so we're just trying to be mindful of this as we write knowing that people outside of NSF will read this and so I wonder what your experience has been if you and maybe you you just answered that for us but this is something I've been thinking about a lot well let me start at the general and move to the specific um I you all have seen a um a kind of um if I might use the term sea change um in in the sciences um over the past um you know two decades or so toward um what um many of us in the Washington trade science trade call use inspired uh fundamental um research uh where where we we and um in those of our stakeholders who provide our funding um congress especially recognize the importance of fundamental uh research but they have become very impatient um and would like to see um more results um faster um if uh if that's possible and um and have asked the agencies to um it devote at least a portion of their portfolios toward funding science that addresses some of these um you know grand challenges that not only are scientifically interesting but they're also important to society to better understand and so um I I have um spent a lot of time especially um up on the hill talking to a number of um of um elected leaders who have have shown um a great deal of respect for and um interest in the the work that we do at NSF um you know for better or worse and I I almost say this hoping that it won't be quoted um and put somewhere in your documents but uh but for better or worse um I I think we've um found that at NSF um because we are able to articulate the work we do in highly scientific terms and um and explain why it's important to understand um why the um oceans um are becoming um you know why the why the thermohaline circulation is changing for example in the um in the Arctic um it is it is of great interest to um to Congress and um and they're very supportive of the work that um is is funded to answer those kinds of uh challenges um but we we don't just um broadly um advertise that it's all done to try to understand climate change um in a way in which we can advise policy um makers on the um judiciousness of managing carbon emissions um if you see see the point I'm making um we stay clear of the policy and we stick to the science and um and I think that there's a large appetite um in Congress and you may find this what I'm about to say interesting but some of you probably know this already that it's it's it's both houses um but it's especially the Republican House that are side of the aisle that that is often um the most interested in funding our science um because they see it as a um an engine of economic growth so um I think we we have a um natural ally um contrary to what you know you you hear from you know inside all the you know the uh the sources in the Beltway um a natural ally in um in Congress and um how else could you explain the fact that we have had um two consecutive years of plus ups in um the NSF and other science agency budgets and um I won't speculate on what we'll get to coming years but um but things have really you know kind of turned around for us so um am I getting to the core of your question they do know what our system science is but what they want to know is how can you help us not only uh understand um tsunamis and um and you know trans ocean subduction processes um and better predict earthquakes but but we'd be able to use that information to um protect constituents and so we we we I we often find ourselves in front of um of committee hearings um where where those are questions that are being asked of us can you help us can you help us um do better with um you know the next hurricane Maria um can you help us do better with the next um you know major um earthquake in um southern california or anywhere in california or anywhere in the country I'm having fun just a point of information I and I'm sorry if you covered this in your presentation does it is the coastlines and people's program also covering rivers and great lakes or is it simply the marine coasts oh that's an easy one um yes it covers the uh the great lakes we consider that a major coastline and um and if you can make the scientific argument persuasive and it passes merit review that the coast of the Mississippi river um is important and we need to know something about it then I was suspect that will also be it's called backwater back water okay and it's big yeah it goes a long ways up these low gradient rivers yeah yeah I would say the same about a Hudson estuary I think I have two questions the first one um and this comes from I I think the idea of these collaborative projects resonates with everyone in the room its earth systems but I've myself been a part of these projects both on the nascent NSF side where it's a huge collaborative project it looks nice there is a push for we all work together and make something greater and it really never amounts to anything greater than a sum of its parts that could have been funded through basic research through more basic um well core programs um so my question is what is the does the NSF use some internal metrics or studies because social scientists study this ad nauseam corporate studies this ad nauseam how do you assemble teams and how do you measure the success of these types of proposals stab and then I'm certainly uh I'm going to welcome uh Lena to to come into it as well um yeah you know um I was at a um a session that um Marsha McNutt um hosted um as AGU last year and and it was you know provisionally it was about um incorporating the social scientists uh into um into the work of the geosciences and um and and at one point um we all kind of talked over the idea of why not let the social scientists um who are involved in some of these big interdisciplinary research team projects um be the ones to frame the the initial scientific questions that are posed um and you know at first um you know there's a lot of um huffing and um you know how how dare we go down that path and then the more you thought about it you know of course this would presuppose that these are connected and thoughtful um and well informed um colleagues uh in the social sciences um who who you know have experience working in this you know kind of um environment with uh other physical scientists um that maybe this would be an interesting experiment to uh to try and um and and so we're hoping that um in the instance of cope that um that kind of kind of reverse osmosis if you will of the the usual scientific process that as you may be inferring starts with um this the the you know the the physical sciences being done first and you probably could either individually or in very small teams at a very reductionist level make a lot of headway and understanding a particular um you know problem but um but but you know in the end um you know having to try to you know connect that forward to um the life sciences and ultimately the social sciences um that that this sort of disruption of going in the opposite direction could be kind of an interesting experiment to try and this is the sort of thing that we would strongly encourage in uh cope and we're also hoping to see that kind of um disruptive thinking in um coast i'm sorry navigating the new arctic so the carolina just mentioned that they are some common interesting research from different agencies and the example that we talked about yesterday is about planetary geology and axial planets and mary said this is a nobody owns and it would be interesting and so the other area i think it's pretty obvious that everybody owns is water that um i think that intersects almost every sector every agency on this planet um and and also um geo-hazard and energy i think you all mentioned those and yesterday we hear from usgs and nasa that was all pretty clear and i was just wondering um whether at the interagency level um both the ar and geo um any thoughts about being more proactive seeking out um potential partnerships and and specific detail mechanism along that direction and and then the other kind of follow-up similar question is within geo that um and they are navigating new arctic even though that's a cross foundation uh program but having a geo and i think of the um the arctic and um hugely intensely related to the water cycle and it's only within geo whether there are any thoughts about engaging um directorate wide initiatives or programs that um and on that direction so thank you chemin because you've given me an opportunity to tell you something that i wanted to make sure i will tell you and that relates to questions that alejo and others have asked so just give me five not even five minutes um we had a hydrologic sciences program at NSF it has been i think in the 90s is when it began and then it joined ear 2010 2009 we need we needed we were going to not have a portfolio in sustainability and we knew that water was key part to sustainability so we had a program called uh water sustainability and climate and and the hydrologic sciences play a very important role in that through those projects they realized that the issue may not have been it was too broadly defined water sustainability and climate one of the key issues that came out was energy and food and water connection in this changing environment all this time hydrologic sciences program has continued and the program has evolved because there were questions in wsc water sustainability and climate that were not they needed that they didn't need a social scientist they didn't need these collaborative projects the teams that were asked of these larger programs there were some fundamental questions about hydrologic processes that needed to be understood to advance that other program so those ps will come to the hydrologic sciences program and then they could go back to those other teams and inform them on the results of these basic processes so models will become more sophisticated and they will have better physics for their processes and all of that so and the same thing is with uh with infuse right now what they have we have learned from infuse as as bill was saying earlier is that the modeling the terrestrial modeling for for water is really rudimentary and it needs to be more sophisticated to really connect the food energy system so the interagency connection comes next. Tom Torgenson has been the representative for an NSF through delegation from the division director to take part in the subcommittee for water availability and quality this is an interagency group DOE is is a key partner the Army Corps of Engineers EPA department of interior multiple agencies there is going to be a workshop hosted at NSF that is mostly agency researchers and academics coming to talk about the terrestrial water model what's needed how we need to advance it the agencies are coming because they need those models for their missions the academics are coming for the research part so this is an early conversation that we don't know where I I can imagine where this workshop may take us and I would be glad to report back to you in two years what was the outcome and how did it connect to hydrologic sciences and at EAR and what other programs were created or came about because these needs came about so that's I just wanted to give you that full circle on how things have evolved in this particular space and Chemin area it was perfect for that and I forgot your other question on hazards it's the same thing earthquake happened in a rich crest of July 4th on July 7 or 8 we were on the phone with a team of agencies they have a mission responsibility to talk to communities local stakeholders we have capacity on instrumentation the research community has capacity we were part of that conversation we are deploying our rapid awards a couple of awards are being made there and all of that is done in coordination through the response to to this crisis can I ask to just resummarize what I think you said Leena to make sure that we I'm hearing this correctly but so the view in part is that these integrated activities actually sort of help to unlock so there's there's goals to make progress in what the stated you know innovations the nexus of food energy and water systems but another maybe equally important goal is to sort of unlock where there are sort of fundamental knowledge gaps that need to be addressed in the corporate because those gaps are going to be highlighted in in those areas and then there will be a space for the researchers to come and let me also add that the these large interdisciplinary research programs are not disconnected from our our core programs as a matter of fact we we are making a you know a certain amount of funding available to the core programs specifically to encourage their participation in the in the large interdisciplinary research programs so for example in the navigating the new Arctic we we would certainly expect to see um participation from everything from atmospheric and geospace sciences to the ocean sciences for sure in understanding the geographic differences in sea level rise around the Arctic and and and you know building better integrated models to predict where we're going from from here into the future so so so we we are not disconnecting the the basic fundamental science we're we're trying to have that exchange back and forth so that ultimately when the Arctic navigating the new Arctic program has had its life and goes away it will have imprinted on the science that's being done in the the core programs i'm sorry jim that was the other part of jimmy's question is is nna and and of course earth sciences is is right there as well right the rivers are coming out bringing in more discernment the permafrost its alterations signals in the soils from the soils it's also a big component in nna with how the soils are evolving in in there so earth sciences is it's completed me completed in there the report that i'm sorry to take the time is that these programs are developed and managed by program directors that manage core programs and in ear i like the people to be there because they know those basic questions that can come up they know the language of their communities you heard yesterday how important is the language so for me i'm not an advocate of bringing somebody completely independent from core programs to create these interdisciplinary programs there are workload issues and i'm mindful of that and i will work with the staff to alleviate that piece as well but they need to be engaged if not driving this thanks i'd like to return to the comment you made bill earlier um which i think is part of the i hope i'm not quoted on this um so it really struck me that that um you said you know that when you're talking to people on the hill and other federal agencies that you're valued because you can articulate the relevance of of the work that this division is doing with respect to climate change and issues related to that and that they're coming to you saying can can you help us with this yet at the same time i understand you're not gained to be throwing around the words climate change and carbon footprint and and whatnot i come from the state of florida i i understand this landscape please me um and and many of my colleagues feel the same way they're not willing to to go out there and get involved with the policy and say no i do the science and not the politics and i need to say disengage yet we're in this moment right now where the political discourse is changing in that instead of questioning climate change we're actually finally having a conversation of what to do about it very much so so to me and it just seems like this is a moment for us to get engaged and and it's yes it's political but the fears the reason we have this fear is it's not because it's political it's because it's been partisanized right which which is which is the real issue at the same time there are 13 federal agencies who participated in the national climate assessment and as you said they they get it do d understand climate change is a threat multiplier so if my question to you is is how can we better engage to help all these federal agencies grapple with this we have the science and the scientists here and and that conversation needs to happen and not being able to use the words or or say those things does cripple us right and so and partly what can we do to help as a committee is is something i'm really interested in as well it's a fair point and and and let me be very clear here um there any any any work that nsf supports um or any proposal that we receive um will be funded on the basis of merit review and um and and it it could it could be a proposal that um builds its arguments um with um use of the term climate change as a um at a as a scientific motivation um and um and it could liberally sprinkle that that word um throughout the proposal and the work that um that that is done um under the award um similarly and um and it will be treated no differently from any other um proposal that we receive at nsf um and i hope that that point um is is well understood and accepted because um the you know word on the street is that um you know in some some corners is that uh well you better watch out if you use climate change um too much you're going to get thrown into a auxiliary pile you know good science but it's not the time for it um that just simply isn't the case um but um it if um you know and i what i what i'm about to say is coming from a person who was the dean of a college that had a had michael man um as one of my faculty members i had a monthly meeting with mike um always to be able to anticipate what might happen next um and i was never successful but um but um you know i i recognize that this is the time to be doing important science um that provides the substrate for um policy decisions that will save countless lives and protect a lot of property and uh and the health of of our fellow citizens and um and that we have an obligation to to do that science um but we also want to do this science um in a way in which we continue to get the support of those who provide the the funding uh for us not that um we should um in any way subjugate what we want to you know do scientifically um but i'm trying to what i'm trying to say is um we we as scientists in the um in the earth sciences um are not necessarily the greatest people in the world to be suggesting um policy decisions in fact i would i would um argue that that as scientists um in spite of the fact that mike man uh one of my colleagues likes to play in that arena that um you know do that you know separately from the science that is being conducted with um with nsf support and um and and that will guarantee that we will continue to not guarantee but it will make more likely that we will continue to be able to do the important work that helps us understand climate change and um and gives us options um you know for dealing with climate change building in resiliency where it's needed adapting to climate change where where that's necessary um and it is necessary um as we speak did i mean did that clear i guess it's it's still a challenge that um knowing the best way for us to be able to help and engage not to make the policy decisions but to help advise as scientists without being afraid to do so right and right right um you know i i learned um i learned through my experience with a um uh a non-epicacy think tank here in washington called resources for the future i was a fellow there and um and for those of you who know um r f f it's it's a highly regarded um think tank um non-partisan and um and its mantra was and it stuck to it um do the science um or organize the scientific knowledge base to be able to um inform policy decisions make the scientific case as clearly as possible particularly to non-scientists but do not cross the line and make the policy um decision for the policy makers and um and that's always driven my my philosophy of how far to go with the science that we do kate huntington university of washington um as a as a compliment to this so um it's exciting that national science foundation is embracing on many levels use inspired science and um both because of its importance to our nation and also to the fundamental how it feeds back into fundamental science but and in the context of partnerships it sounds like a lot of partnerships outside of nsf but also sort of big initiatives within nsf it seems like a lot of the collaborations are driven by or have the flavor of an element of use inspired work in there and so i guess i'm you know as a contrast i sort of inspired by some of the things like carolina and others were saying um you know astrophysics doesn't worry about uh so much use inspired perhaps and nasa does but it also embraces their contributions to understanding the wonder and and mystery of the universe and world and um geo and ear i guess i'm curious in what ways are we identity are we are we really selling our identity um as embracing our our our contributions to the pure understanding of wonder of the world and what opportunities for partnerships and collaborations are there examples of of really successful ones that are driven more by the wonder of the universe and the earth than use inspired or do you think that to be successful use inspired is really part of the part of the mix that needs to be in a successful big um interdisciplinary thing or or collaboration across the the the foundation or outside well it's another good question and it's a tough one because um i came into the job with um the the premise that that geo um has not done a good job of communicating um the value however one defines value of of the science that we do to um the public um to congress and um and the white house um you know really just broadly to all stakeholders on earth um we just simply have not done a good job of explaining why why it's important to understand um how the earth formed and all the processes that define the evolution of the earth through um earth history and um and you know we we've kind of been painted into a box that um well they're the they're the science of doom they're the ones who um inform us about um you know hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis and and and all the um the the um destructive um things that we've done to the natural ecosystems of the planet so um we've got a lot of work to do um i i think to change that um that that perception and um and of course i'm i'm i'm over dramatizing to make a point um i do think that um that we're appreciated more than you think um but um but but particularly on the issues of um environmental change um we we tend to you know be be put into um into that box um i i think that um we recognize this um in geo and we've um started a new strategic communication plan um that um you know for one thing um the front office uh communications program for nsf our office of legislative and public affairs political affairs has really not given geo the the attention that i think we deserve historically and and we we have started and really truly engaged um that office to um to to you know more aggressively give them um information that they can use and we're starting to see some results uh from it and i might also say that um i've been in conversations with um chris mackinty at agu to try to take advantage of um the you know their big anniversary uh that's coming up to jointly make a statement of just all the tremendous you know you talk about you know the the all the work that's been done with photographing the the black hole for example in astronomy well we have our black holes in in the earth sciences they're you know plate tectonics and um and you know some of the uh major steps forward we've been able to take and forecasting um you know severe storms and and and you know they don't quite you know speak to the grandeur of the astronomical sciences um but they're very practical and um and and quite um impactful discoveries that have been made um throughout history and very few people they hide in plain sight very few people know them and know these stories and so we're we're going to try to lever off of uh agu to um to show what nsf has contributed um with the collaboration of our major science societies like agu over the years so so it's a big effort um we recognize the problem but it's going to take more than just my four years as um ag to you know really start a new narrative for the geosciences you want to add anything to that yeah and i think it's all of us right and andrew was asking what can you do and it's all of us who have to be out there and proud and celebrate all the discoveries we make whether the discovery today is about a new um property of a of a mineral phase at a high pressure that we still don't know how that will translate later on but maybe later on it becomes important phase on understanding nucleation of earthquakes whatever it is right it's hard for us to to predict who knew that a project funded in the 90s and tectonics about rock fracturing was going to be fundamental for fracking right so those those are hard to do my job as a current division director is to to make sure we celebrate all the discoveries all the accomplishments of our communities and i go to every panel and i'm taking this opportunity asking you to let us know whenever you have a new discovery if you see something that is going to be big the the sooner we let us know the the sooner we can start working with this office at nsf to make a big splash the big hole the black hole picture it wasn't that story wasn't making for a year so it was not those just like i got my paper published and is accepted now now no they began working when the discoveries were being made so please please let your program director not send us emails i love to hear good news and this is coming this way i this was unexpected your students your student is taking on a useful path he became a lawyer and now he's doing whatever it is let us celebrate all of those accomplishments as much as the jrf and all the other awards that we are recognized because we need to work all together to change the perception that the public has of earth sciences we live on the earth why don't you want to understand how your house operates right so so let me if i could um you know and and i'm going to go um out on a limb here and respectfully suggest to the committee um an idea um and it starts with a story um you know the fundamental physics of um magnetic resonance were um worked out by some physicists at columbia working independently of some physicists at berkeley back in the early 1930s and it won one of them some no bells um but it took until the 1970s before that knowledge was used to build the first mri and um you know i told that story to a local um congress congressman from pennsylvania um when i was at penn state a couple of about three years ago and he said wow that's the best story i've heard of the importance of doing fundamental um research that is not known to have any particular usefulness um but that ultimately it revolutionized diagnostic medicine and so my my question to you is um in and as you write the this very important you know survey for us um could you spend a little bit of time thinking about exactly those kinds of stories that make phenomenal sidebars boxes to put in the in the report because that that's inspirational and it uh and it shouldn't be all that difficult for you to think of um you know a few of those kinds of um you know real watershed moments no pun intended i might not be short i think i think moeller's having the worst time right um mine is actually very pragmatic in that in listening i've i've heard about the coat project there was there was emphasis on the nna and then i just learned about the water quality and availability discussions taking place and one of the things that i'm concerned about maybe we all are um is that our report is fully aware of what nsf is doing so you don't say hey there's an exciting thing you were saying yeah we're doing that so i've gone to the web page many many times and some things they're changing and some things that are on there are no longer on there and so are there some things that are in the that you can talk about that are in the middle of ideas that are coming forward that are sort of in the stage of debating discussion that we should hear about we should know about that maybe hasn't made it onto your web page or something like that because i want to make sure that we're aware of things cooking and nsf so that we can either come you know connect to it or not be redundant is there are the other ones that you would want to ask i mean you know this is really um just sharing uh pillow talk you know right now but yeah it's it's um it's it's just the kinds of really wonderful conversations that that we have around nsf um that that kind of circle the kinds of um the way you're asking this question um and i'll i'll have my my say and then i'll turn it to alina for the you know a little bit more of the earth sciences um perspective but you know we we have watched with um with real awe at um some of the um big discoveries that have been made um in the earth sciences in the last um you know few years that um that were only possible because we had new observing technologies that gave us access to either different areas um or different seasons that have um dramatically changed um our thinking about um how the earth works and and i'll give you an example um Jorge Sarmiento's um soccer work um you know on the southern oceans where as you all know probably better than i the um the you know most of the um measurements of uh carbon um in the southern oceans was possible only by um you know ship borne observations and only in certain parts of the year when the ships could gain access to the uh far far southern ocean and um and on the basis of those um sparse observations we had um reached a you know i think a fairly reasonable conclusion that the southern oceans may very well have been the so-called missing sink of carbon and that um that that that that we had more or less balanced the carbon cycle and um and yet Jorge with um the use of gliders that gave us access to observations um at depth um along the ice margins um and in in the you know Antarctica and the um the the far southern ocean in winter yielded a very different story that um that there are suggestions from his work that maybe the southern oceans are basically um neutral um when you look at the uh the winter time observations so you know there's more work to be done before anything really conclusive can be drawn but the important point that is um that i want to make here is that um that with the use of um intelligent um machine learning based um sensors that give us access to different times of year different places um give us the ability to um you know find in the ocean a uh a chemical gradient and um and to begin to follow it and sense it and um and and be smart enough to look for other species as it um as it goes um has has the potential to um give us great leaps in understanding of some of these more complex systems like the carbon cycle and so um this we're asking in geo is it time to engage the engineering community along with the earth sciences community to take advantage of this um new technology and to um begin to adapt you know a zero order um step would be just to adapt some of the market um sensors um you know with some um ingenious um you know um modifications that give us the ability to ask some of these really um you know um big questions and expect to see something different come because we have access to um areas that we never had before so that's that's an area that you know just because i'm describing it in very general terms you can tell that it's it's not very well developed but it is a very edge of our thinking yes yes well i i just i don't have much to add really um i think you the committee has done a very thorough job of kind of understanding the current landscape things that will be um stable at the moment because we just launched the big ideas we were that was kind of them the first part so we are in in that kind of actually good time for the committee to do you know what the landscape is and then as community members as you talk to your communities will be dreaming forward what should be the next part the party's going to ask us that in your presentation to us when we started you said that the the quote was the division is in transition oh leadership transition it was primary leadership okay that's what i was i was sort of i looked at no i thought okay what does this mean so it's just leadership not that you have other things happening okay well and we we had uh ended earth scope yes um the ccos were coming to a new phase the nice public yeah um so that's that's what i meant uh in november practical different question now so in terms of this public outreach communication it seems like there is an issue for ear at least i mean issue something that could be done better so what could you suggest beyond just saying we should communicate our science to the program officers we all write broader impacts and we all do that already so what can we as a committee say that's broader if you have any suggestions no not to put you on the spot now again i'm a true believer of partnerships so taking advantage of their professional organizations that they organize we cannot advocate right as a federal employee we cannot organize this is but we we can suggest names for congressional briefings and things like that so um i grew up in a time where we're communicating my science outside the scientific enterprise was not encouraged i wasn't taught how to do it they were not frameworks now now those frameworks exist and i said let's take advantage because i think we will be dreaming and we are branding too right nasa has a brand name nsf had an issue with branding and the new this new leadership in the office of our public affairs they're very very um heavy on brandings so airplanes any anything that nsf support now has a big nsf logo so we're trying to also brand uh nsf yeah it is quick yeah it seems to me it's become the norm now for all academic institutions to have a communications office that develops these stories and i think we just need to make sure that we take whatever the people at the university write up to brag about us and convey it to nsf yeah i'm glad you brought that up mike because um you know i one of the things that um causes great indigestion at nsf is um is when um you know some of the great science that that you're doing uh you collectively the royal you are doing um in the in the research institutions um is is written up in a very beautiful way and um and the and it's conveyed in a way that's clearly um meant for the um you know the public and um and and and other stakeholders to um to understand and yet nsf is left out of the the equation and um and it just it it really um you know we really need that um recognition not not not just so that we can polish our you know vests but but because um we we really depend on it to um as a currency if you will to when we go to the hill and talk about the value of the science that we support okay i really want to thank um bill and lina for spending so much time with us and um i think we'll go ahead and break now and uh hopefully convene reconvene closed session in 10 15 minutes something like that and thanks very much for thank you all i really appreciate all that you're doing here it's um really i'm really excited to see what you produce and if i can be helpful again in the future at any other juncture please please call on me same here and uh we're really looking forward to what you would have to say so um please don't hesitate to reach out if we can be of further assistance


feel like the more I read her poems the more they open up to me and I have such faith that they're those kinds of poems that live forever and travel where they need to go. So I picked out a few. I couldn't decide so I have so many favorites. I've met Janice in Colorado Springs when I moved there for a few years to go do my PhD and I was living with my parents in Colorado Springs and I I somehow looked up and found out that Janice Gould lived in Colorado Springs and I'd read her work when I was a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts and so she was you know this magnanimous poet to me. I was a little nervous if I could reach out to her and if you know someone of her you know magnitude as a poet would want to talk to lowly old me and but she greeted me with such kindness and we went and had coffee together and thus began several years friendship when I was in Colorado and we would get together once a month or so and take a walk or have coffee and talk about poetry and life and the world and politics and Aikido and just plants flowers and I too have learned so much from her little did I know when I was nervously calling her thinking oh I'd love to meet Janice Gould in person that she'd become such a dear friend and a great teacher in my life a poem is about to flower full force from my abdomen my spleen my wrists my ankles I could feel the pip of it in last night's dream that kept threading its way back to sacred land where I found myself in my 20s and where later you and I were dream happy our house the one that appears in all the strange locales you and I dream inhabit could be seen dimly through the pines on a dry hillside our landlady was there stooping over her garden we are always moving in or moving away from that falling down place made of stone or weathered wood or adobe but just passing by our old home as I did in last night's dream made me feel excited yes there it is and serene like seeing an old friend and when I woke I longed for that familiar dreamscape as if it is a real land as if that dark earth the landlady turns with her trowel is scented with loam is mapped with leaves and small roots as if the wind blowing dust down the mountain road is an actual wind as if a poem could emerge from a seed I remember a walk that we took in springtime and the cottonwoods in Colorado were just like lime green small leaves and everything smelled fresh and yellow and and I remember she was talking about how to interact with difficult things in your life peacefully and that's something that I've just learned so much from and I grew to love and with her was her her way of being peaceful and being a warrior through song and through gratitude she also loved the land so much and we connected on the fact that I had been living here for a long time in San Francisco and she grew up in Berkeley and so we would talk a lot about California oh actually that's when I wanted to read this is kind of a prose piece it's called running and I wanted to read it in honor of here where we are in this land and all those who protect it including her running in the morning I run on the big springs trail late spring summer and fall it's a dirt access road for the Tilden Park Rangers a fire road because our California Hills are dry for much of the year the Canyon Oak Chaparral and Eucalyptus could provoke a lively burn mornings jogging in wispy fog I watch a stellar Jay diving into the branches of a Monterey pine here a toey kicking up leaves beneath a clump of chaparral or see a young fox diving for a rabbit that had just disappeared down its hidden hole a breeze rustles the pale red and blue leaves of the oily Eucalyptus trees cools my face as I begin a steep part of the ascent towards the top of the ridge the road is rutted with deep cracks and in some places sharp around it rocks jut out I have to dance around them choosing my path carefully the soil is gritty a soft brown my pace slows to the east I can see the bryonis reservoir its water glinting a silvery gray the bleach slopes of the hills the shadowy greens of oaks and laurels spread up the banks and into the canyons farther east Mount Diablo rises and I can hear the drone of the freeways the streams of traffic the acrid smell of weeds dry brush dead fall then the full force of the bay wind travels briskly upslope when I reach the apex of the ridge to the west toward the bay and ocean fog has burned away the sky above the shoulder of mount tamal puss glows the clump of dark outcrops called the feral on islands look like the backs of wales what have I been thinking about nothing or rather as I run I silently sing a kate wolf song about the red tail hawk remembering the time I saw a hawk soaring high above the silvery chain of a snake rising in its talons moving sweating physically straining the other things that come to mind disturb me less my mom's illness my dad's transvestism and the slender woman I'm in love with the highest place on the road feels like the top of the world right here my older sister and I once spotted a coral snake slipping beneath some dried wood and brush a rare sight garter snakes and even rattlers are a bit more common I used to have dreams about snakes I believed they were friendly creatures that often talked invariably after such a dream I would see a snake next time I went out running now looking north panting lightly I catch my breath I can see loaf shaped Mount St Helena the far reaches of Suisse and Bay the rolling marine hills I turn to the south beyond the suburban towns lie the rangelands and valleys big cattle ranches watersheds the multitude of wildflowers growing in secret places during the passing of seasons owls clover choreopsis clarkia buttercups california poppies lupine turks cap scarlet pimper now I can feel the sun warming the top of my head while my body is cooling in the fresh breeze I like to imagine the time before the white people came to this land a time of plentiful game salmon runs grizzly bears honey bees among the flowers women grinding acorns while their children scrambled among the rocks playing people fished along wildcat creek or went clamming on the mudflats by the side of the bay when I start trotting down the road back to the trailhead I have to be careful where the dirt track is steepest and the soil crumbly then I'll drive home to our old house to the big quiet rooms the hum of mom's sewing machine where she sits making rag dolls and toys to fend off the certain pain that lies ahead I will return to my bedroom with its books papers and poems my studies my helplessness but the sweat drying on my body feels good and that moment at the top of the hill when I could lose myself in memory stays with me I will always know the smell of these canyons this sky the feel of this earth beneath my feet dear soul I find a few words you scratched on blue lined paper ink fading over time a photo of you as a child frowning as you hold a blanket to your naked breast I remember everything you said not each word but enough to know your goodness your resolve where have you gone dear soul have you learned to value the luster of your own bright heart always I wonder which star you have become have you joined the flight of birds are you in sunlight shining through the green of june or are you in the wind a chime tolling its one true note I'm just going to read there's this last piece this last section of a very long poem and then one more and then we'll move on this is just the seventh section of a beautiful long poem in seed I like this drift of memories and spend a lot of time here driving to point rays and back home to Berkeley rain or sun fog or wind thermoses of tea coffee or cocoa empty someone hands around sections of appealed orange or a package of cookies funny how the journey home invites contemplation rather than conversation everyone watching the highway the woods clouds passing over the crest of hills horses and pastures stocks of dry thistle funny to remember the place along this road I picked up three girls hitchhiking the place my car broke down and dad had to come for me the hillside where the prickly pear cactus grows wild the old movie theater a back road up to Malpas the 1930s houses tile roofed painted white some architects dream of mexico or spain then the long span of bridge over the silver bright water smell of refineries oil tankers at dock the dark east bay hills gray green and the afternoon light and finally the winding streets of our town pungent smell of eucalyptus heavy shadows the chilly north slope where our house sits among redwoods and rhododendron I know so little about the soul but I think we are always heading homeward determined to arrive finally welcomed and I'll close with this last poem which is the last poem of seed beyond knowing if I look with the corners of my eyes to that place where poetry begins images may appear despite the ringing in my ears and raging in my mind the imperious demands of what they call the future or furious denunciations of self looking is the beginning of seeing the risk one takes in discerning what is there rattlesnake coiled by the roadside history buried under abandoned foundations the stain of blood on quilts and blankets if I look with the right eye I see my own intention extending into the distance past the place where the earth curves into a light blue sky if I look with the left eye I settle into my own breath feel the beat of an invisible heart the tremor of soul fastened to the integuments of my body if I look beyond the corners of knowing I can see the shimmer of a different light illuminating what could be naked small truths ocean washed agates along the north coast spider's web bedecked with spatters of dew even a discarded cat's claw shining on the hardwood floor