Nominating Committee Report

A large number of strong candidates were proposed for the ICAM Science Steering Committee. Recognizing the importance and the magnitude of the task before the ICAM community, that of maintaining the momentum built up at the Founding Workshop by conveying both to potential partners and to potential funding agencies the depth and breadth of support for ICAM, we concluded that our best course of action would be to identify nominees for TWO committees.

The first, an interim and founding Board of Trustees, would deal with the organization of the Institute and be responsible for negotiations with interested Universities, Los Alamos, LBNL, and other DOE Laboratories concerning their support for, and participation in, ICAM. It will be charged with changing ICAM from a virtual Institute into a real one. This Board should have representation from interested leading research universities, from leading members of the UC system, and from Los Alamos and LBNL. It might initially contain as many as twenty eight members. Its first major task would be to decide on the optimal organizational form for ICAM: as a unit of UC which reports to the UC Office of the President (UCOP); as an independent entity located in Los Alamos; or as a unit of Los Alamos. A second task for the Board is to decide on the likely scale of initial operations, which in turns depends on our success in raising funds from Governmental agencies and from founding Universities and Laboratories which would like to join the ICAM "Club", and, in so doing, commit to making a modest annual contribution to ICAM for the next five years to help ensure that it has the necessary start-up funds.

The second committee, the Interim Science Steering Committee, would take responsibility for the organization of the scientific research activities of ICAM, beginning with writing a proposal in January which would go to interested funding agencies. It will have choices to make in addition to writing proposals. Thus, among the questions it will need to consider are the topics and organizers of the initial exploratory ICAM workshops, the timing of a postdoctoral, senior visitor, and "borrowed" graduate student program (can we start this in Sept. 1999, as many workshop participants have encouraged us to do?), and plans for our first summer school. We recognize that in the long term, 18 may be too large a number for this committee, but in this initial stage we need all the help we can get.

It is our view that by forming the two groups we will better be able to take advantage of the grassroots interest in, and support for, ICAM, by involving at the outset more ICAM enthusiasts in the formation and operation of ICAM. It is, we think, desirable to have some overlap in the members of the two groups, but in what follows we have proposed that such overlap be moderate- roughly half of the proposed Interim Science Steering Committee would also be members of the Interim Board.

In concluding, we emphasize the interim nature of both groups; the appointments are intended to last only until ICAM is formally constituted, after which we expect that the Board and Advisory Committee will determine the composition, term of appointment and size of the respective groups.

Respectfully submitted,

Elihu Abrahams, Rutgers University
Zachary Fisk, Florida State University - NHMFL
Don Parkin, Los Alamos National Laboratory
David Pines, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
David Whitten, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Peter Wolynes, University of Illinois Interim Science Steering Committee