The Flood is Coming...

The river ice behind our house is almost completely thawed. While the grass is still not visible I began to wonder: What are the river levels? There are two items to watch: the levels in Winnipeg that say if we are flooded and the levels in Grand Forks North Dakota that say if we will be flooded. So far we are above the median and the flood forecaster is saying things like: if we get xx millimeters of precipitation in the next xx days then we will reach the 1996 flood levels. No one is talking 1997 levels yet but it will rain today...

Still Winter Here!

This past weekend I spoke with some Ontarians who said "most of the snow is gone here". Below is the view from my back yard and a picture of me shoveling the roof this past weekend! Note that most of the tracks are not human but are critter oriented... the fox den is just out of view of this photo.

A change in tone

Since I started my position the chair of my department has been very good in saying that I should discover what I want to do, who I want to do it with and ease into this new position. Two weeks ago there was a change in his tone. Suddenly he was saying I should apply for my first grant now. The grant is for infrastructure but the application requires that I describe what projects that infrastructure will allow me to accomplish. Thus I have to describe in detail what I will be doing fo the next five years by the end of this month.

I should not be surprised. The two months of relative freedom to explore have allowed me to settle in while trying to work on the CIHR grant I am a co-investigator on. However, most academics must hit the ground running and I will need infrastructure. Given the pace of beaurocracy I won't see a dime of these funds until at least a year from April. Well such is life.

This means I am busy, trying to initialize a collaboration with NRC's Institute of Biodiagnostics, wherein I will be a guest worker there. They are going to write a letter of support for the project and possibly dedicate magnet time (aka MRI time). I am also establishing a dialogue with Monteris Medical who do MRI-guided laser surgery on brain tumours to discuss possible collaboration. Finally I am discussing collaboration with University of Manitoba's Joint Replacement Group who do x-ray stereography to evaluate post surgical status of hip and knee replacements.

All of these projects are exciting and involve alot of applied computational geometry, measurement, optimization and imaging. I believe this is exciting work and the opportunity for innovation is great but I have to convince experts through the written word. Not always my strength :-)