Things continue to go well here as I settle in to the new job and new home. I'm staying very busy balancing my class, ordering supplies and equipment for my new lab, training my new undergraduate researchers and meeting with potential graduate students. I also have lots of meeting with other professors, trying to build up collaborative projects. Now I just need to get some graduate students in the lab starting on some actual research. Today I received about 19 boxes of lab supplies from my huge start-up Fisher order. Fisher is the big research supply company and they give ISU a large discount and new lab start-up orders get an even larger discount. And today my new office furniture was finally installed and delivered. I'll try to post some pictures of the lab and office soon.
We've had a very exciting research development. Last year, a group of researchers at ISU submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to start an Engineering Research Center (ERC) with the goal of producing biorenewable chemicals. The center is called "Center for BioRenewable Chemicals" (CBiRC). These researchers were kind enough to include me on this proposal. Excitedly, our proposal was one of the 5 selected this year for funding. So now we have $18.5-million dollars provided over the next 5 years to start this center.
Here's a link to a video of my coworker (the head of the project) discussing the project. And there's a news story
here. We have about 16 professors on the project, and some of them are at other schools, such as Rice University and UC Irvine. The chunk of funding that I get this year will be used to pay the stipend and tuition for 2 graduate students. Now I just need to recruit 2 graduate students.
On the personal front, things are going well. We've had a slight warming over the past few days. Today it was almost 80F. I mowed my lawn this evening, maybe for the last time this year? On Monday evening Sheba and I went walking in the local public woods. These woods are less than a mile from my home and have several beautiful walking trails. We saw several deer (Sheba had a blast running after them) and then we got hopelessly lost. Well, not really lost. I knew where we were, but the road that I wanted to use to access the main road had a locked gate and a 10-ft tall fence. So we had to turn around and go back through the woods even though it was getting dark. And THEN I started to think that we were lost. I was just about to starting yelling for help when we finally stumbled out onto the main road; there was just a sliver of sunlight still visible and the full moon was already up. One of my co-workers was out on the main road walking HIS dog (the same guy from the CBiRC video, actually) and he got quite a kick out of my story. Apparently everyone gets lost in there from time to time. Next time I'll make sure we have plenty of daylight left before heading in there.
Speaking of my neighborhood, I was surprised to see that my street is available on google map's "street view".
Here is the link.
Anyway, I'm rambling on. I'm continuing to get to know my neighbor (and her dog) and her two close friends (and THEIR dog). And I've found two book clubs that are interesting. I'll sign off for now.
We've had two weeks of beautiful warm weather here. It's been up into the mid 70s each day and has been just gorgeous. Sheba and I have been walking a lot. Today we went back to Ledges State Park, about 15 miles east of Ames, and did some of the "uppity" trails. We've been back to the local public woods several times too. I've also been taking advantage of the local farmer's market, which will continue through mid-October. Some new-to-me finds include pattypan squash and non-traditional-colored (but still yummy) watermelon.
