| Minutes
Research Advisory Committee (RAC) Meeting
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.
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