[Grad-postdoc-assn] Thompson lecture selection (and mentoring opportunity in Africa)

[Thomas Hopson]

Hello All,

we wanted to thank everyone who attended this past Friday's discussion and
selection of our next Thompson lecturer, thanks to those who sent in their
votes via email, and also thanks to the ASP office for doing all of the
footwork to set this up and provide the catering. It went very well: we
had a great turnout, the discussion was contructive and informative, and
all the candidates appeared to be highly qualified and capable of doing a
great job for us (and could and should be put up again for this fall's
lecturer). And the voting went well, with 3 candidates in particular
fairly "neck and neck", and from diverse scientific areas.

One issue that wasn't discussed that should have been clarified: as we
know, the Thompson lectureship is meant to be an honor bestowed on the
selected individual by the whole NCAR community. As such, our selected
candidates also need approval by the NCAR directorship and the ASP office.
So please, until this is done and until the ASP office has had a chance to
formally invite our candidates, we ask that you try and keep our final
selections fairly private.

On a different note, the SOARS program is looking for mentors to work with
talented students from Africa for a few weeks this summer. I've coped
their email discussing this below.

Thanks again for your contribution to an excellent selection process.

Tom, Kristen, Gyuwon, and Ankur


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: A note from Raj about a new mentoring opportunity in Africa From:
   "Annaliese Calhoun" <acalhoun at ucar.edu>
Date:    Thu, January 25, 2007 1:22 pm
To:      undisclosed-recipients:;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Friends of SOARS and those interested in Africa,

I hope this note finds you well.  I'm writing with an opportunity to 
serve as a mentor for a 3-month project for bright undergraduate math  and
physics graduates ... in Africa.

This opportunity to mentor comes through the African Institute for 
Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). AIMS is a 1-year postgraduate program for 
math and science graduates from universities throughout Africa; AIMS is 
designed as an intensive prep year to get them ready for graduate school 
(nearly all of them go on to PhD or master's programs).  After 6 months 
of classes, the students do 2-month independent research projects  ("essay
projects") supervised by outside professors. On behalf of AIMS,  I am
inviting you to consider suggesting and supervising one of these.  The
deadline for project proposals would be Feb. 2, which is soon.

Thanks for considering this - it's a good way to reach out to future 
African scientists. More details about the potential projects, time 
commitment, and how to apply are below.  This opportunity is entirely 
separate from the SOARS program and would not interfere with serving as  a
SOARS mentor this summer.

***********More Details***************

Project Scope:
The essay projects can range from literature review to fairly complex 
model-building. Information on past projects is online at
http://www.aims.ac.za/resources/essays/.

Time Commitment:
Supervising an essay project won't be a huge time commitment. It would 
probably involve a phone call on Skype to start with, and sending the
student a bunch of material and references, and then maybe an email  every
week.

Resources for Students:
The institute has a Linux system with a good internet connection. The 
students have been programming all year, mostly in Python (and
gnuplot) but they've been at least introduced to Octave, an open-source 
Matlab clone. (The students use only open-source software.)

Student Preparation:
Students are generally trained quite well in mathematics - they're 
comfortable with quite advanced levels of analytical math. According to
past mentor (and former UCAR post-doc Liz Moyer) their programming is  a
little more rudimentary. They are slowest at reading journal  articles 
and processing large amounts of information, but this is something they 
need to learn for graduate school.

More information:
There is more information about AIMS on its web page (www.aims.ac.za) or
on Liz's page
(www.arp.harvard.edu/people/moyer/Teaching/Teaching.html . See also 
pictures at
http://www.arp.harvard.edu/people/moyer/Field_photos/AIMSDec2006.html)

How to Apply:
You can submit an essay proposal directly at
http://www.aims.ac.za/english/essay.php. Please do let me know if you've 
submitted one, and feel free to contact me with any questions that you 
have. I look forward to making this connection happen.

Thanks,
Raj

Rajul Pandya
Director and Principal Investigator
UCAR SOARS Program

E-Mail:  pandya at ucar.edu
Voice:   +1 303.497.2650
Fax:      +1 303.497.8629