MICHELLE MCCLURE: Obviously, we should have scheduled more time for questions at 5:00 or 5 o'clock, really fast. [LAUGHTER] So I'm going to give you an overview of PMEL right now. I'm going just talk briefly about NOAA history, PMEL history. I'm going to talk about our research themes, our Cooperative Institutes, the role they play at PMEL. Where we are as an organization, which is where I'll take some of the questions like our age structure and then couple requests about the reviews as a whole. So the very first agency that became part of what is now NOAA was actually founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1807, the Coast and Geodetic Survey. The first presence that we actually had in Seattle was 1898. The Coast and Geodetic Survey was there in that building, you can still see in Pioneer Square if you want to parade that section of town. The area where we are right now was from 1920 to about 1970 a Naval Air Station. NOAA was founded in 1970 by stapling together a bunch of agencies, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, the Weather Service, and a variety of other agencies. And became what is now NOAA. This lab was actually founded in 1973. We were housed out in the hangars, the World War II era hangars. And until this facility was built. And we moved in right there in the early 80s. We also have the facility in Newport, Oregon. We're part of the Hatfield Marine Science Center together with OSU, National Marine Fisheries Service, a variety of state agencies. EPA is there. So that's the most collaborative center. You're going to hear a lot about guiding documents off and on throughout the whole review of this. This review is primarily a backwards one and we're kind of at an inflection point at some level with guidance documents with both with NOAA, OAR, this lab, all developing new strategic plans. These are the current administration's priorities for NOAA. It will be economy, those activities that we support, they contribute to fisheries, to other economic activities in the marine environment. And the weather impact looking at reducing the effect of extreme weather events and other extreme events as well. And that includes guidance on things that are contributable to climate change. Again, somewhat backward looking, this is our current mission and vision, really focused on the combination of observing, understanding, developing new technologies to be able to observe and understand and informing society. So our work under the strategic plan from 2013 is organized under four broad themes. The first one is climate. And this is where the lion's share of the lab's work is actually focused. So this plan is really focused on looking at basically how our Earth system works, how climate it's driven, how the ocean and our climate system interacts. The next one is marine ecosystem. So here we're looking at physical and chemical drivers of ecosystem structure and function and how anthropogenic impacts of that are altering the systems. Oceans and coastal processes focuses on the interfaces. The interfaces between the ocean floor and the ocean, and the interface between the ocean surface and the atmosphere. So these are the processes that affect again, how our system works. And then finally, we have a theme aimed at innovation. One of the real strengths of this lab is our technology development and innovation. So we have a whole theme to organize, to implement new technologies, developing technologies and observe our world in different ways. And so I'm going to focus on two of our unique contributions. We actually have lots of them. The first is this engineering piece and the second is our long term observations. So again, one of the unique things about PMEL is that we have a separate engineering department that works very closely with all our science components and it's more than a collaboration. It's a true integration between our engineering folks and our scientists. And it has enabled us to go places where we haven't been able to go before. And that in turn has enabled us the ability to take long term observations that are fundamental to, as Gary said, detecting change to finding anomalies and to look at those research questions that can only be answered when you know what your baseline is, when you have that long term information. So PMEL pioneered a lot of mooring technology. So not only that-- There's a lot more than I realized actually goes into moorings, the cables, the winches, the sensors to pioneer a lot of the technology. We also pioneered the bottom pressure recording sensors for tsunami detection. We established the use of a lot of tracers for detecting ocean circulation and describing ocean circulation patterns, which are fundamental then to climate models and other oceanographic information. We've been honestly pioneering in deploying sensors in autonomous vehicles. So this is a glider here. You'll see a lot about saildrones. We've done a ton of deploying different sensors in different ways to go places where ships can't or are too expensive to send. And we sample things in different ways. This is actually a device that was developed here that samples the fluid from hydrothermal vents. Exceptionally hot, very difficult obviously. So there is a lot of engineering and technology development that enables us to see the world. You're going to see a lot of PMEL's observing assets throughout the next three days. I'm going to give you an overview of all of those so that you can see kind of the composite of what we do. Moorings have been described as our bread and butter of what we do. We have long term buoy arrays in several places across the world. We were leaders in developing the Global Tropical Moored Buoy Array. Hats off to Mike McPhaden there. This is the TAO Mooring Array which has been transitioned off, the National Weather Service now, now manages it. We have a couple [INAUDIBLE] not so much. The blue triangles are two midlatitude buoys. The one closer to North America is Station Papa. That's one of the longest oceanographic time series in the world. We have a series of buoys up in the Arctic that have been very important in helping detect the rate of change in the Arctic. As I said, PMEL pioneered the development of tsunami warning buoys and the technology underneath that. This is the tsunami warning area. Right now we have eight countries that are using that where we not only develop and deploy these buoys, but we also are helping train other countries in the use of these buoys. So these are actually not all the hydrophone deployments right now, but we recently established a national noise reference station network. We also have a hydrophone moorings in a variety of other places taking noise samples, as you will. It takes readings at Challenger Deep, the deepest place in the ocean. And we have a variety of ship-based studies. PMEL has been active in-- These are the last five years except for Go-Ship which shows the whole series of Go-Ship. PMEL has been active in all the Go-Ship cruises. We've used volunteer vessels that actually take a look at carbon or sense and track carbon recorders from New Zealand to Long Beach, and Long Beach to Hong Kong. Over in the Atlantic Ocean, that's the atmosphere chemistry sort of cruises. So it's done in collaboration with NASA and NSF. Up in the Arctic, we have a regular series of cruises looking at Arctic ecosystems. And the stars actually reflect ship-based cruises to look at hydrothermal vents and underwater volcanoes. We have a lot of ship-based work as well. We are a leader in Argo floats. This shows all the floats that PMEL has ever deployed. The red ones are active. Right now we have 13% of all the Argo floats that are out there. And as I said, we've been a pioneer in autonomous vehicles. We've deployed autonomous vehicles in the Arctic along the West Coast, obviously out in Hawaii. This is a wave glider that was sent to explore actually an area that is highly undersampled. And just this last year, we completed the first autonomous circumnavigation method looking at pCO2 and carbon dioxide [INAUDIBLE] This is the sum total of PMEL's observations. Our understanding of the ocean would be really different without PMEL. We're also very dependent on Cooperative Institutes. Cooperative Institutes are formal memorandum of agreement between NOAA and universities. NOAA currently has 16 of them. They cover, I think, 42 universities in 23 states. Something like that. We, during the time period that we're reviewing, we've had four of them. One based at the University of Washington, JISAO. One based at University of Hawaii, JIMAR. CIMRS based at Oregon State and CIFAR, which was completed actually about a year ago. And that was an Alaska-based on. The point of the Cooperative Institutes is that they help NOAA do research and development to achieve its mission. They also help us educate the next generation of scientists. We are very dependent on our Cooperative Institutes at all levels of our science. They contribute a lot of our staff. We also work very closely with them, departments to further our research overall. So a few things about our organization, oops, I went fast-- we have two science divisions. We have basically a data management group, data science group, and an IT group. As I said before, we have an engineering group that is at the level of the entire lab. So they work closely with all our scientists. Within each of our science divisions, we have a number of research groups. And the point I want to make here is that each one of those science divisions actually encompasses pretty much all the research teams that we have. There's not a lot of alignment. We have a lot of cross disciplinary work that goes on in our divisions. The staff composition. So this is actually-- We kind of have to guess at this based on numbers. So we had for 2009. This is the last five years. We're an organization of a little less than 180 people right now, only a little more than a third of us are actually federal employees. We have a majority of Cooperative Institute folks. And the majority of those are in our science groups. And this slight decline that we're seeing in the total staffing at PMEL is only driven by a gradual decline over time in federal bonds. This is actually one of my goals is to increase this ratio so that we're closer to 50-50. We're an organization that has a little bit less than $40 million, it's been pretty steady for the last five years. Our base funding forms actually less than half of our total budget. This is the portion that comes from the OAR program. So like what Wayne was talking about. The lion's share of this actually comes from the oceans and climate. We do get some weather funds, but most of it is oceans and climate funds. This is other NOAA stuff. So for instance, the Weather Service funds some of our tsunami work. And this is external funds up here. It's been pretty flat for the last several years. And this one, I want to make a couple of points. This is our fixed cost compared to our base funding. Our fixed cost of labor, rent, basically are a little more actually than our base here. But the main point I want to make here is that labor is the biggest component of our fixed costs. It's in fact 72% of our fixed costs even while the federal numbers have been declining. So that is clearly static even with a decline in actual numbers. Ship time is another resources that's very important for the lab. Overall, we're a ship going laboratory. Overall, we have had a fairly stable amount of ship time, but who provides it has changed a lot over time. So the amount of ship time that we get on actual NOAA vessels has decreased with time. The amount of ship time that we spend on other vessels, international partners in particular, has increased dramatically. Age profile. So feds are the blue bars and CI folks are the black bars. Those of you who have heard me say that the average fed was 62 that we did have a couple of retirements. So apparently did a little bit better now. Our average is actually 55 at this point. Still we're on the older end. And what this means is that within two years, over half of our people are going to be eligible for retirement. Diversity--the blue part here is female versus male people and the black is male people, excuse me. The blue bar is male people, the black is female people. Again, we have that same bias area described. We actually did do a salary [INAUDIBLE] and we do not have a salary bias between men and women at the lab. And obviously racially, we have the same bias that Gary talked about as well. So we have some work to do there. So here we have achievements. We have a very strong science enterprise overall. This is total publications. This is the peer-reviewed publications. This time we actually reached the record last year in 2019 of 144 publications. We also contributed I think 26 of the papers in OceanObs'19. Adds value in the scientific community. We're highly cited. This is our citations to time down the lower one. And this is a histogram of the H-indices of the PIs and all that. So folks are-- their work is being used. We cross disciplines. Our work is being cited in physics, our work has been cited in biology, oceanography, and in public health. And it gets used in more practical ways too. Gary and Wayne both talk about transitions. Transitions are really important. We're a research lab and this is the way we bring our work forward to the users. They're complicated too because we have a wide range of customers. Some of our customers are right here in the lab. Some of our customers are other agencies. Some of our customers are commercial products. So you'll hear about transitions, some of which are data products that inform fisheries management plans. Some of them are actual mechanisms like the prawler that you'll hear about that helps take oceanographic profiles. We have six cooperative research and development agreements in place or completed over the last five years--two patents, a while ago, and three trademarks. We contributed a lot to outreach and mentoring. We conduct about 75 or more public events a year. These range from the NOAA open house here. And the Hatfield Marine Science Center open house days too, Science On Tap and public lectures. So our scientists do a lot of work in the community. Over the last five years, we've mentored 87 students from high school to post-docs. Our web presence is growing. We don't yet have a strong social media presence and hoping to change that as well, but we are getting a stronger and stronger web presence. One of note was actually the Arctic Report Card this last year, generated literally tens of thousands of hits in just a very few days. And it comes from all over the world. And because of all this work, PMEL has actually received a lot of awards. We have a couple of scientists who are members of AAAS, Fellows of the AAAS, and Fellows of the American Geophysical Union. We've received a number of NOAA awards. Just last year, we had two scientists receive the Distinguished Career award. One of the things that I also want to mention is that these awards often come to our scientists, but we have both world class scientists and world class support people. Our mooring technicians, our administrative staff, all those people who enable us to do this work are just as vital as the people who sometimes appear to be the [INAUDIBLE] of PMEL. Several challenges that we face. A really big one is maintaining these long term time series, which really underlie our ability to ask questions while either implementing new technologies that are better than the technologies that are currently being used or taking on new areas of inquiry. How do we support what we've done and provide the vital service to the scientific community while still expanding? Obviously we have sufficient succession planning and workforce. So diversity issues, hiring issues, and retention here in Seattle is actually top. It's a very high cost of living and the government has a very set payscale. Infrastructure is a challenge. And I'm going to say all aspects here. So our budget, our facilities, again, we're in a--our mooring shop is in a World War II era hangar. Sustaining innovation, Gary mentioned this. And this is a really important part of this lab. And it's a combination of what are the cultural elements, but also doing this in the face of increasing government regulation, increasing security measures, things like that. How do we maintain the vibrancy that this lab has in this area? And then finally, we all know that computer science is just exploding. And how do we harness that? How do we take advantage of that best? Overall, as the standard review criteria for the lab, quality, relevance, and performance. And I have requested a few other areas. First is emerging focus. So are there things that we're not doing that we really should expand into? Are there areas that it might be worthwhile to pull back a little bit on? But also geography, not just [INAUDIBLE] geography. And as an example one of the priorities that Wayne mentioned was the Arctic has been put forward as a priority. The Arctic has been put forward as a priority and then taken back as a priority, forward and taken back. And the money that goes along with that makes it difficult to actually implement it. So that's an area. And then a second is just thoughts about managing our science. So our organizational structure, if you see ways to enhance the workplace or the workforce. Prioritization is an issue that I struggle with as a science manager in that individual scientists get motivation from individual interests. And I personally think that that's a really important thing to foster. And how we balance that with agency priorities and make sure that we're meeting both of those. And then finally, we recently went through a strategic planning exercise and communications came out as a very important piece. And any thoughts about prioritization in our overall communications and engagement is very useful. And with that, there we go. [CLAPPING] Adi tells me that she'll cut the break by 5 minutes if we take 5 minutes for questions. So we can do that. AUDIENCE: There's 180 people here, many of them are PIs or just-- MICHELLE MCCLURE: I think we have 41, that's at PI level. AUDIENCE: Michelle, there's some things in general I'd like to spend more time talking about, but we don't have that time right now. For instance, you brough up review criteria. I'd really like to talk more about how you implemented review criteria, what are the outcomes for people who achieve those things? That will take more than five minutes. So instead of timing our process, [INAUDIBLE]. MICHELLE MCCLURE: Yeah, the time where we'll sit down in a closed session with OAR and PMEL leadership to discuss, we can discuss that then. AUDIENCE: Can you say something a little bit about the Cooperative Institutes in terms of staffing achievements, we have statistics. But how does it actually work? Are they--so to use just one, for example, so there UW staff, hired by UW, and PMEL funds some of their time? MICHELLE MCCLURE: It depends on the person. I believe that John is going to talk about this at greater length. We have time for both John and Michael Banks, he's the Director of CIMRS, to speak. But basically PMEL determines that it has a need, it funds that need, and the University, the University then provides that. Our PIs who are CI folks also do things like write their own proposals and bring in money. So there's an interaction and part of the co-development liaison. AUDIENCE: Are the PIs in the CIs, to be 100% working for dollar funding, PMEL funding, [INAUDIBLE]? MICHELLE MCCLURE: I'm going to give that one to John. JOHN HORNE: So there are currently for JISAO, just depends where you are, it's JI-SAY-O or JI-SOW. There are 25 PIs. There's a range of funding for those people and their programs ranging from 100% down to about 50%. So there can be a blend. And I'll show you the balance. Whether it's external or NOAA-derived funds, whether it be NOAA initiated or in association with other faculty from UW or others initiated projects that can come up our way. AUDIENCE: So the statistics on publications, awards, include all those-- MICHELLE MCCLURE: They include our CI partners. AUDIENCE: So a lot of questions about that. I don't know what we're going to do the question. So when they're hired, they are hired by UW? JOHN HORNE: Correct, in this case. AUDIENCE: With that particular NOAA funding and NOAA need involved with their hiring or not necessarily? JOHN HORNE: If you're limiting it to the PI program, we'll call it, yes. And the aim is for a longer term association for developing a program of projects where the University assets and leverage can be brought in to supplement or support those. Each PI does work in association with largely an established program here. It doesn't exactly cover everyone. So there is constant collaboration on the feds side and on the CI side to identify priorities and to execute the project. AUDIENCE: Is [INAUDIBLE] reviewed every five years? MICHELLE MCCLURE: They go five years. They have an option for a five year extension. And then there is a new competition for a CI. AUDIENCE: Thank you. So you mentioned that you had 41 PIs at PMEL. And when you were talking about the awards, something that was really striking, very impressive was 13 AGU and AMS Fellows. Is that over the 41 or a larger number of PIs and the CIs? These acronyms are getting to be a bit much! PRESENTER: When we compiled those we did not distinguish between federal or CI. AUDIENCE: What is the total number of PIs of all flavors? MICHELLE MCCLURE: 41. [INTERPOSING VOICES] MICHELLE MCCLURE: That includes our CI PIs. AUDIENCE: So of the 180 people at PMEL, how many are PIs? You answered earlier that that was 41. MICHELLE MCCLURE: I will double check the numbers. I will double check the numbers. JOHN HORNE: I will show the numbers for the CI and how they fit into the programs. AUDIENCE: So anyway, 13 of 41 is very impressive because of the 41 [INAUDIBLE]. [LAUGHTER] Thank you. JOHN: Thank you. [ON PHONE] This is Bob Miyamoto, can you hear me? MICHELLE MCCLURE: Excuse me? BOB MIYAMOTO: This is Bob Miyamoto. MICHELLE MCCLURE: Hi, Bob. BOB MIYAMOTO: Can PMEL receive other federal organization funding as well as foundation and industry funding? MICHELLE MCCLURE: It depends on the legal mechanisms. There are ways to do each of those things, but there are constraints on each of those. BOB MIYAMOTO: OK, thank you.