As we head into Winter Break here at George Mason, there is a bit of time to sit back and reflect on the past semester: we saw the selection of a new President, the opening of some spectacular new campus facilities and an incredibly productive time for our science, both in terms of new research findings and teaching. I’m grateful to the entire faculty, staff and students at the Mason’s Institute for Advanced Study for what they’ve accomplished this Fall and look forward to the Spring semester.

In the meantime, I’m pleased to report that the traffic seems to be getting a bit lighter here as folks leave town. The weather in DC has been relatively balmy lately–as a native Californian, I’d love to see that trend continue through January and February.

For the NIH I mean. The ScienceInsider blog entry is here. The key point? NIH is considering the way it does business on its main investigator-initiated RO1 grants to deal with anticipated cuts.

I’m submerged at the moment in a virtual pile of grant proposals that are stored in my iPad. They are collectively very interesting, but also have a unique ability to suck up all of one’s available time. How far away are we from Strong AI to review grants?

MBL’s wonderful journal has a new look and feel here. It’s an honor to be the tenth editor of The Biological Bulletin. This month’s virtual symposium issue on regeneration is open access. Enjoy!

That’s the office of our CFO, Jane Wendelin. It all happened about 90 minutes ago and reminded me of my native California. Turns out it was a 5.9 earthquake, about 80 miles south of us. All of our equipment and labs are fine. Same with all of our staff.

Thanks to colleagues and friends from around the world who’ve emailed and texted.

Having just been reappointed to my third term as Director, a short blog post to acknowledge and thank the faculty, students and staff of the Institute for their confidence in my leadership. And to also thank the current leadership of the University for the same.

I look forward to continuing to work with all of our stake holders going forward to 2016 realizing of course, that there are always unforeseen circumstances and changes for which I pledge to put the interests of the Institute and the University first.

I checked in with colleagues in Japan today and was relieved to hear so far OK. Our condolences go out to the victims of the quake and Tsunami. And of course, we watch with concern a nuclear power plant in distress.

1. Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran
2. Design and Computing ’10 John Gero Editor

I’m back…flew in from St. Kitts last night. I’m enclosing a picture from St. Barthes though. These are two of the six boats owned by the same Russian Billionaire. The one that appears to be a submarine is particularly stunning. It covered the distance from where I took the picture to over the horizon is what appeared to be 20 minutes.

As for me, I’d rather have a two-photon microscope.

Thanks to patient and loyal readers for their patience. Now back the world of science….

With the Advisory Board, we did another walk through of the new Krasnow Institute space–the progress is terrific. I’m extremely pleased with the speed of construction and the caliber of the new labs. Thanks as always to the members of our Board who play a central role in the vitality of Mason’s Institute for Advanced Study.