Greetings on a cold Presidents Day Weekend. We took a break and went to the beach, avoiding the non-catastrophic non-blizzard that was predicted for DC. It’s beautiful and quiet here, but when we went to a popular local restaurant on Friday evening it was pleasantly filled. It has been a most relaxing weekend, and I for one needed it after a very busy past two weeks.
We are in budget and faculty evaluation season. I saw a few patients. I also interviewed two candidates as potential successors to Sandy Jablonski in my lab. We put in the finishing touches and submitted Zoe Malchiodi’s wonderful first-author paper on natural killer cells in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. I cannot believe how much work is required to submit papers to high-impact journals. To think that I imagined that the pace of my work life would be less frenetic after the CCSG competitive renewal site visit! I could not have been more wrong.
I participated in a very interesting daylong Georgetown University Executive Committee retreat that focused on leadership in these challenging times. Plus, on Friday I co-chaired a virtual NCI study section to review NCI R35 outstanding investigator awards. I personally reviewed nine proposals, and was simply awed by the extraordinary talent and high accomplishments of the people who applied. It makes Jeanne Mandelblatt’s successful R35 award last month that much more impressive to me. There is no higher bar of peer recognition in our field, in my opinion.
The coming week will be busy as well, but then I have a break of sorts. Harriet and I will be flying to California over the weekend. We’ll spend a couple of days visiting one of her cousins in Palm Springs, and then will drive down to La Jolla, where I will chair the EAB for the Sanford Burnham Prebys NCI-designated cancer center. We then fly directly from San Diego to Philadelphia for Fox Chase Cancer Center’s EAB meeting — a mock Site Visit rehearsal. We’ll then spend a night or two with our son Ken and his family before heading home. So, it will be a combination of hard work and fun.
Because I will be traveling, I will hold off on blogs for the next week or two. In the meantime, stay safe and be well.
Lou
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