SA-YSSP

This weekend I was invited to address the first group of SA-YSSP participants at the University of the Free State (UFS)  at the opening ceremony. As a past participant of the YSSP program at IIASA, I was asked to talk to the students on what they should hope to take away from  the experience.

I won't repeat it, but I hope the students embrace the opportunity they have been given and share their cultures, research and life journeys. I hope they soak up everything they are shown and taught, it really is a unique experience.

Following the opening ceremony, I was privileged to talk to the individual participants and hear their plans for the Summer.

The following  two days I got to join the Bloemfontein tour,  lunch and Campus tour.

The UFS Campus is rather spread out, with a wonderful postgraduate library designed to serve their interests! Reminded me of IIASA's library and librarians.

The Bloemfontein tour took us part buildings of interest, the Wildlife Reserve and my mom's old school :)

Zanchieta, the Wild Cat Farm outside of Bloemfontein served as our lunch stop. The cats are rescued, boarded or owned the the family that own the farm. They are beautiful to behold. 

Late Summer Workshop

Today is the start of two full days of presentations by the YSSPs on their research over the Summer. Its been an intense 3 month period and looking back there are many many things I would have done differently. The first was to communicate well in advance with the group I'd applied to. I've noticed that nearly all participants with "Cold Calls" have had far more misunderstandings with their supervisor and spent a lot more time explaining the background to the problem and their motivations.

This year the presentations are grouped a little differently to normal. Presentations are grouped according to research topics instead of research programs. I presented in the "Addressing Selected Problems in Africa, China and India" section along with Arame Tall (Senegal), Nimi Hoffman (South Africa), Xuchao Yang (China), Linke Hou (China) and Sarthak Gaurav (India). Our presentations were 15 minutes long with 10 minutes for questions. As the first group to present, we now can happily sit through everyone else's without feeling any presentation anxiety.

Following our presentations we have an Interim Report to hand in at the end of September which should be more indepth than the presentation.

Philosophy for a United Earth

Professor Joseph Agassi of Tel Aviv University gave a talk on the Philosophy for a United Earth this morning. While I'm not sure if I would buy into the argument for a global institution I did appreciate his comments on if only... Think back to the last time you said If only, it is an escape clause, something one says when one expects failure. I hadn't really considered this before.

Korea's Science and Technology Policies

Yesterday IIASA hosted Prof Chan-Mo Park, the president of the National Research Foundation of Korea. Prof Park detailed the vision of Science and Technology in Korea under the new government. He emphasized Green Growth, the integration of Green Technology into all sectors and believed this is the future for a developing nation. As a result the government is rapidly increasing their S&T budget with a large percentage going to R&D. It is nice to see governments pushing the Green vision and a belief in Science as a way to empower a nation. The Korean government has set very ambitious targets for the next 5 years which may be impossible but the philosophy behind this shows a nation that is very serious and not just paying lip service to the Green vision. I look forward to seeing the results.

Prof Park also detailed some of the work on S&T co-operation between South Korea and North Korea. Earlier in the Summer we had talk on Diplomacy in Science and this is definitely a fine example diplomacy in action. One very interesting thing I learnt was about the strength of North Korea's software developers, with the right resources I believe they could seriously compete on the international stage.

Wicked Problem

Today's presentation on the Science on Global Problem Area: Energy & Climate Change by IIASA highlighted their second strategic research plan stream. Climate change was described as a "wicked problem": messy problem with different definitions, no single solution. Officially a "wicked problem" is a phrase used in social planning to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems. I think its appropriate.

ENE (Energy Program) presented the current energy challenges. There is a growing demand for energy services (globally) that are reliable and has a secure supply. There are currently 2 billion people with access to energy sources. IIASA is looking at energy policies, savings and options available. There is a Global Energy Assessment will be released next year of which IIASA is a coordinator and author. Should be an interesting coffee table book :) The slide comes from the presentation given and highlights just how many factors one needs to consider and all the complexity of integrated assessments.

APD (Atmospheric Pollution and Economic Development Program) reviewed how costly/ambitious the Annex I Mitigation Pledges are and are they comparable between Parties? The costs of these pledges range from -0.3% to 0.1% of the GDP of each country at 2020. It seems the Ukraine has the highest cost saving but New Zealand seem to be losing out.

RAV (Risk and Vulnerability)
Anthony Patt of the Decisions and Governance Group within RAV revealed the two paths within RAV, adaptation and mitigation. One study of interest to me was done on Mozambique and its disasters. Using two different techniques; linear extrapolation of current trends and coupled-model ensemble projections they looked at disaster frequency. Interestingly enough the ensemble model projections show that Mozambique isn't going to have an increase in disaster frequency but the statistical models do show an increase...what/who do you believe? The picture on the left is taken from the cover of Options Magazine, a presentation of IIASA and its research to a non-specialist audience. The last issue talks about looking beyond Copenhagen and the current issue explores Green growth.

The elevator pitch: Your life in 3 minutes

The elevator pitch, a summary of your research for the general population. I'm sure everyone has done an elevator pitch at some stage in their life. That dreaded question "So what do you do/study?". Today is the YSSP Introductory Workshop and each research group has 5 minutes to introduce their research interests and then each student attached to the research group has 3 minutes to give their elevator pitch.

The general idea:
1 minute: Who you are, where you are from and your technical background
2 minutes: Your research question you wish to explore during the YSSP period including your scientific interests for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Marek Makowski (my supervisor) shared a few recommendations that other groups seem to have missed.

1. 2 slides
2. No more than 7 words per line, 7 lines per slide
3. No full sentences that people can read and not focus on you.

Climate Saver Campaign by WWF

I attended a talk titled "The Business Response to Climate Change" with WWF's Matt Banks (Senior Program Officer of Business and Industry). I thought it would be about initiatives in industry within the USA but I learnt more about polar bears and how the Arctic ice sheet is disappearing. This I suppose was an emotional ploy to the audience but the speaker came across as bored. I lost interest within the first 10 minutes. I did learn though that HP, Johnson&Johnson and CocaCola have all signed on to this Climate Savers campaign.

First Snow

It snowed for the first time today. Apparently it won't "stick" but just fall for the next few weeks. I think the locals thought I was crazy, I was dancing around outside in the snow catching snowflakes :) I am sure I will hate the snow soon, but its still a novelty. Next time it snows enough to collect on the ground its snow angels and snowmen time.

In other news, the Engineering Graduate Symposium took centre stage on Friday. The day started with an overview of what to expect doing Engineering at Michigan and then department talks. This event is directed at undergrads looking to join Michigan and is sort of like UCT Open Day but for students already in university. The AOSS grads presented topics ranging from regridding climate models for translation from cubes to lat/long, Venus and its oxygen and nitrogen nightglow, Aerosol composition and cloud formation and Mars's middle atmosphere. Afterwards we went to dinner and drinks on Friday night and we took over 2 tables in the end. Dinner was nachos, salsa, burgers, beer and a Cookie-tini! The girls shared it, the thing is huge, 7 cookies and 5 scoops of ice-cream.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu visits Michigan

Desmond Tutu is being honoured today in Michigan. Tutu will be awarded the Wallenberg Medal and deliver the 18th Wallenberg Lecture in honour of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg (U-M graduate) who saved thousands of Jews in WWII. It turns out that Tutu is the second South African to receive the medal, Helen Suzman being the first.

The press conference in the afternoon was jammed full of reporters but I managed to talk to the organisers and was allowed to sit in on part of it and be introduced to him. Apparently someone forgot to mention that Michigan is cold in October as Tutu arrived with summer suits. The organisers had to scramble to find him a coat and scarf to keep warm.

The Wallenberg Lecture itself was packed, all 3500 seats filled and an overflow hall set up. Archbishop Tutu spoke about the award going to all the people who made the end of apartheid possible. He has an incredible sense of humour that shines through on lighter moments. He encouraged the youth to dream and keep dreaming of peace and freedom globally. He critised Darfur and how rape has become a weapon of war. He finished his address with a metaphor. That an eagle should be taken and nutured and then set free from the mountain tops to soar.

Google Earth Scientific Applications

Day one of the Scientific Applications with Google Earth Conference was interesting in that I have never looked at the features of Google Earth in any depth. The first speaker Tim Killeen from NSF explained that less than 10% of all data they had was ever viewed and a system is needed for people to view this data in a simple environment. The two highlights to take away is that "data to knowledge" is key and "big uncertainties remain" wrt climate and understanding. So nothing new. He did however touch on new projects such as the NSF Ocean Observatories Inititiave , the final design of which is due in December.

The next speaker Dan Atkins from the University of Michigan and NSF spoke on the "Role of Data in the National Science Foundation Cyberinfrastructure for 21st Century Discovery". He touched on data stewardship, curation, federation, openness(over the long-haul). He stated that providing information a geographical-based entry to data is natural and compelling as we all have an inherent geographical frame of reference. I learnt a new word: nomenclature. Not sure I will ever use it though. Three project he reviewed were interesting:
TeraGrid: an integrating infrastructure
Blue Waters - look into tech specs
nanoHUB

The third speaker and possibly the most compelling was Michael Weiss-Malik from Google. He is a KML Product Manager and explained the design of Google Earth and the need for it. To use the analogy "to most users, the interface is the computer" he pointed out that with any paper we read the figure is the thing one remembers most and so the philosophy "to most viewers the presentation is the data". Something definitely worth remembering. KML is a standardised format derived from XML that encodes the Google Earth files.

The last two speakers, Sean Askay and Trey Smith, are both users of Google Earth to represent scientific data and presented a series of KMLs already developed that emphasized this point. The topics ranged from Appalachian Mountaintop mining to Geothermal resources, the global climate temperatures to Google Moon. The coolest thing I learnt about was actually GigaPan. Definitely worth viewing.

After lunch we split into Working Groups, mine was Climate Change and we heard from Lisa Ballagh (NSIDC) and John Bailey (University of Alaska) about climate KMLs and Virtual Globes. The group talked about various research endeavours that would be favourable for Google Earth apps and I realised I could present my seasonal forecast stuff in GE eventually. After reviewing current KMLs we found various things we wished were possible in Google Earth such as being able to switch off labels on load or preferential loading of data and user notices to know what to do. The last thing we discussed was who owned data and what happens when you pubish papers with GE images and supply online KMLs. Google have written a guideline specifically for this and is available at: http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html

Met Office

I boarded a train at 8.30 this morning for Exeter. What's in Exeter? The Met Office. The SAWS equivalent with more money. We got a taxi to the office, nice change to walking and trying to catch buses. The taxis wasn't allowed into the grounds until he identified the passengers. The Met Office is very tight with security. We were escorted to the bathroom!

The visit itself was mind-boggling. The place is huge. Has its own gym and cafeteria. Bruce gave a talk about ICA and stakeholder needs. Between all this I met a variety of researchers, all of which explained their research. I now have a massive task of trying to remember the content and go back to look it up when I have more time. Amongst this is: Land use change, snowpacks, perturbed physics, downscaling, ICA, DFID, fires in RCM, albedo from burning, vegetation feedbacks, splines, SOMs hierachies.

Drowning in statistics

I drowned in statistics at a Royal Statistics Society day. The theme: Communicating uncertainty in Climate predictions. I hope to not see a summation sign for a few days. I'm going to have nightmares :(

In further news, I hate the tube during rush hour, the other people push and shove and I'm little and get squished. Its not a pleasant experience. I will avoid this if possible in future.