Dear Colleague: NEON in Process

CEO David Schimel and Board Chair Jim MacMahon provide an overview of recent project activities, including the NEON funding outlook, a summary of the Preliminary Design Review, Founding Members, and more.

Dear Colleague:

It has been awhile since we tried to bring you up to date on how NEON is progressing. As you might guess, NEON with its many facets is a very complicated project and we often are at a loss as to what to report to the general community since we make excellent progress on various tasks, but it may be some time before they are completed. A good example is notification of all of you of the final decisions about the responses to the Request for Information (RFI).

The community spent a great deal of time during December to produce documents that have been used to choose NEON sites and to help define instrument arrays. You would think we would have reported on this some time ago. However, we knew there was some discomfort in the community with some of the Domain site choices we made (as reported to you in our letter of 16 March 2007) so we wanted to work on these a bit more, including making some site visits that were spearheaded by Deb Peters. We also wanted to open those preliminary decisions to further structured scrutiny. We did this by including such considerations in the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) that we underwent in late April and early May. Letters informing the teams whose recommended sites will be used, as well those whose sites were not chosen will be sent out in the next few days.

The PDR was yet another NSF merit review of our progress, particularly in the areas of project management, development and business systems, as well as some of the design elements including Fundamental Instrument Units (FIUs), Fundamental Sentinel Units (FSUs), cyberinfrastructure and, of course, site selection. More than 20 panelists participated in the NSF review, and they represented a wide variety of fields other than ecology. The PDR folks have delivered a preliminary set of questions derived from the review that we must address. We believe we will complete this task sometime in July. The PDR panel will review our responses and forward them to NSF. The Foundation will likely set a time for NEON to be presented to the National Science Board late in 2007 or very early in 2008. Between NSF receiving the PDR panel’s comments and going to the NSB, several in-house NSF reviews of NEON will occur.

At the PDR, there was consideration of how much NEON would cost in terms of both the MREFC funds and Operations and Maintenance. No final amounts have been announced though we have a better idea of some constraints. Because we do not know final potential allocations, we cannot finish planning of the various gradient sites within domains or across the country. These activities require relocatable towers and the number of these is one of the items we must adjust to meet NSF funding realities.

As you can see, it was tough to know what to tell you since many matters are not yet finalized. None of this appears to be an impediment to the ultimate construction of NEON. Indeed, with regard to funding we continue to have NSF’s significant support. NEON was included in the NSF FY 07 Budget Request and was approved by congress as a new start MREFC project. The release of funds for construction will be subject to completion and approval of the Project Execution Plan. In addition, NEON is included in the NSF FY 08 Budget Request with funding identified for an on-going project.

Finally, NSF/BIO research funds are providing continuing support for the NEON Project Management Office, NEON, Inc. Consortium, and development of the final Project Execution Plan until MREFC funding is approved for release.

Real progress is being made in areas that may seem mundane to scientists: business and accounting systems are in place and we are searching for a firm to conduct our annual audits. Of greater interest to all of you is that we are close to naming a Director of Science and we have candidates for Chief Financial Officer and Procurement Manager. We will soon announce the opening of Domain Scientists positions, visiting Science Officer positions and several workshops where colleagues will provide input to a variety of NEON activities. In addition, the Board will be adding seven positions to be filled from the 18 Founding Institutional members that have joined NEON so far. Several other new At Large Board members will be chosen by the Board as some of our colleagues rotate off. These Board changes should be completed by the end of the year.

Incidentally, as our institutional membership continues to grow nicely, your institution might like to become a member, either institutional or founding institutional. You can find the details for applying at www.neoninc.org.

On the down side, Dr. Karin Remington, our outstanding Project Manager, will be leaving us for a wonderful opportunity with NIH. Karin will become the Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, within the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Similarly, Dr. David Kirschtel will leave NEON and join CUAHSI. David has been a stalwart of the NPO and will be missed by all of us. Best wishes to both of these colleagues.

We appreciate your patience and understanding of the complexities of NEON planning. To date we have had a small, talented, staff charged with getting everything done. That should change over the next few months. Had we not had the input of all of you as committee, tiger team or review committee members we would not have been able to meet the challenge of the Preliminary Design Review.

We know we can count on you in the future. We are excited about the progress that is being made to make NEON a reality. We will call on many of you in the future and know you will respond positively. As Jim Collins said to us recently, NEON is like building a house – you must create a specific, detailed blueprint before you can lay the foundation. Only then can things begin to take shape.

Thanks for your invaluable help in the past. We really need your support as we tackle the next major milestones.

Sincerely,

Jim James A. MacMahon Chairman, NEON, Inc. Board Trustee Professor of Biology Utah State University	Dave David Schimel CEO, NEON, Inc. Climate and Global Dynamics Div. NCAR

Posted by amarshall on Monday July 9, at 10AM.