It would be good to start positioning CV in the community's mind along the lines suggested by Weedman. Comments? KYL Fred K. Y. Lo Director and Distinguished Astronomer National Radio Astronomy Observatory 520 Edgemont Road Charlottesville Phone: 434 296 0221 VA 22903 Fax: 434 296 0385 U. S. A. Web: www.nrao.edu ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 09:55:00 -0500 From: Dan Weedman To: flo@nrao.edu Cc: rtr@veris.astro.virginia.edu Subject: Charlottesville science conferences? Dear Fred, During our discussions in Charlottesville three weeks ago about strategies to pull together the NASA and NSF communities, one of the suggestions was to have regular science conferences based in the new ALMA center. I encourage you to begin thinking about such "Charlottesville" conferences. April would be a good month for such conferences, for weather reasons and to avoid conflicts with other meetings and university events. It would be great to establish this as an annual affair. If there is to be one in April, 2006, planning should start now; the UVa astronomers might be able to help in this also. Now is the time to begin. The space missions whose science goals are closely related to ALMA are Spitzer, which has about 4 more years of life, the ESA mission Herschel (once the "Far Infrared and Submillimeter Telescope", FIRST) scheduled for launch in two years, and SOFIA, scheduled for routine flights within two years. (SOFIA will be relevant for molecular spectroscopy but not for the high redshift universe.) I expect to visit Charlottesville regularly so would be happy to help organize a conference. Regards, Dan