Archive: SMD Community Town Hall Meetings
July 22, 2021
SMD Town Hall Meeting
Watch the July 22, 2021 Community Town Hall (YouTube) *Please note that the recording of this meeting did not begin at the start of the meeting. It is missing the first 4 minutes of the town hall.
June 3 and June 15, 2021
Cryospheric Sciences Virtual DAPR Town Halls
May 24, 2021
2021 Astrophysics Theory Program Information Session
April 28, 2021
Dual-Anonymous Peer Review Town Hall for Planetary Science Programs
April 20, 2021
SMD Community Town Hall Meeting
January 25, 2021
SMD Community Town Hall Meeting
January 21, 2021
Planetary Science Division R&A Town Hall
December 3, 2020
Fundamental Physics Virtual Townhall
November 17, 2020
SMD Community Town Hall Meeting
September 10, 2020
SMD Community Town Hall Meeting
July 9, 2020
SMD Community Town Hall Meeting
Watch the July 9, 2020 Virtual Town Hall (YouTube)
(Due to technical difficulties experienced during the Town Hall, please be aware this recording features some audio and visual issues that may impact your viewing experience.)
May 28, 2020
SMD Community Town Hall Meeting
March 20, 2020
Dear Colleagues-
The leadership of SMD recognizes that the COVID-19 epidemic has placed tremendous strain on all of us and our families, disrupting our lives and putting new hurdles in the way of accomplishing our professional goals. Our first priority is the safety of everyone who works on NASA missions and funded research and SMD leadership is committed to doing all it can to support our community. I want to thank all of you for your patience and hard work as we transition to this new normal.
We know that progress on funded research may slow and in some cases even stop due to necessary telework and lack of access to facilities and labs, the closing of public schools and daycare facilities for our children, the transition of teaching activities to on-line classes, and other family obligations. SMD understands this potential outcome of the current epidemic response and will work with the research community and its institutions to mitigate any impacts and to make plans, when possible, for a way forward. This situation will undoubtedly cause some inefficiencies, but we continue to be supportive of any research that can be done remotely.
Last Friday March 20, I hosted a public town hall and wanted to reiterate some of the key messages from that discussion:
- Our priority is everyone’s safety and protecting hardware and integrity of data for operating missions
- We are working with each mission and project in detail based on where they are in the development process
- Missions in I&T will continue with the smallest teams possible
- We are anticipating impacts to solicitations and evaluations and will work with the research community to mitigate them
- We encourage all to continue to pay graduate students, post-docs, and lab staff
We will also continue to provide updates to the community.
As we work through this unprecedented situation, please keep yourselves and your families safe. The government has established a new informational website, coronavirus.gov, which has useful information, and watch for continued communications from agency leaders about NASA’s status and steps you may need to take.
Be safe!
Sincerely,
Thomas H. Zurbuchen, PhD
Associate Administrator, NASA Science Mission Directorate
Government-wide guidance, NASA Agency guidance and SMD FAQs about COVID-19 and awards may be found in the SARA Library.
For in links to SMD community town hall meetings about Dual-Anonymous Peer Review and other information on that topic see https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/dual-anonymous-peer-review.
