Research Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes September 2, 2003

Attending: Richard Bowen, Denis Dean, Donald Estep, Steven Hayne, Keith Paustian, Todd Shimoda, H. J. Siegel, Darrell Whitley

1) There was a brief report on the IS&T faculty database. It should be ready for a test run by the RAC before the next meeting.

a) The plan to ask chairs and deans to nominate faculty to be among the initial set of faculty included in the database was discussed. A student will be hired to browse web pages of the nominated people and populate the database with the minimum set of contact information. Then the faculty will be contacted by email and asked to review the initial information, add a short description of their research interests, and provide a list of keywords.
b) The daunting task of generating and defining key words was discussed. It was decided to ask the faculty themselves to generate an initial list and further action will be based on that initial list.
c) Each person in the database should be contacted once a year and asked to review and update their entry. It was decided that an automated email contact script should be implemented.
d) The chair of the RAC should investigate the possibility of connecting the OSP proposal call parsing system to the PRIMES database. One goal would be to insure that IS&T faculty are alerted to calls for interdisciplinary proposals in IS&T.
e) D. Estep said that one of the topics for discussion at the next IAC meeting would be the ISTEC database and the possibility of creating a parallel industry database. Todd Shimoda will describe the ISTEC database.

2) H.J. reported on the current plans for the ISTeC Distinguished Lecture Series. Current lecturers include David Haussler, Jim Hendley, and Don Michaels. There are currently two other nominations by D. Dean; Gene Colabatistto and jack Dangermond. Other suggestions are Jose Phillipe (robotics, remote sensing) and Stuart Gage at MSU (computational biology).

3) H.J. noted that proposals that put ISTEC in the keywords on the SP1 form provide a way for ISTEC to demonstrate achievement.

4) The RAC decided to meet on October 7, November 11, and December 2.

5) The committee discussed ways in which ISTEC could help faculty submit proposals in IS&T. D. Estep noted this was one of the main goals in setting up the current ISTEC structure. H.J. noted that ISTEC has some funds that could be used. Suggestions include

a) ISTEC could help fund a short workshop, working lunch, or planning meeting in order for faculty to get together to map out the early stages of proposal preparation.
b) ISTEC could provide funds for faculty to use to pay for secretarial support, such as getting CVs, scheduling, and so forth.
c) D. Whitley described the new C.S. policy of providing help for the actual proposal preparation to faculty. They have hired a technical editor who reviews proposals. He reported that this has dramatically improved proposal style. It may be that this person has some free time that could be used by other IS&T faculty with ISTEC support.