Research Committee Updates

Based on discussions with the ISDS Board and the most active members of the Research Committee, the following changes have been made to the Committee's structure:

1. Maintain the Literature Review and the Resources section but suspend (at least) the contest and forum efforts. The Committee will continue to move as quickly as possible toward the special issue of ADS for the first technical contest.

2. Under this consolidation, the Literature Reviews would occur every other month, alternating with general meetings.

3. For general meetings, the Committee is going to try a topical rather than a functional format for increased participation. The topical format will be informal, with an invited panel of 3-6 presenters who would not necessarily prepare slides. We will use GoToWebinar to shift between presenter desktops. Individual members or subgroups could plan a single monthly meeting choosing a research topic of interest. (It seems easier to ask a committee member to organize one informal call of interest to that person than to serve on a continual basis, and it also seems reasonable to find one topic of interest every other month.)

Given the success of the Literature Review presentations, it seems likely that these topical meetings will generate more interest than regular functional meetings and may spawn new cooperative efforts. They may lead to some of the other original Committee goals such as grant-seeking just by getting more participation.

The next full Research Committee Meeting will be taking place on Thursday, July 30th at 11:00 am EDT. More details to follow.