As many of you know, we have been a little short-staffed the last six or seven months. Anne Andrews has left us and John Hall has moved to be Program Director of the Joint Fire Science Program in Boise, ID. This has left us all scrambling and has led to some things that are important to you falling through the cracks. We’re about to get most of our staffing issues resolved so I thought I would take this opportunity to provide an update to our PIs, friends, and customers.

Monday the 31^st of October will be my first official day as Director of the programs. It’s going to be sad leaving the Naval Research Lab after all these years as a postdoc and employee but I am excited about becoming an official SERDP employee. I’ll eventually have a mail.mil e-mail address so please keep my spot in your contacts list open. My phone number will remain 571-372-6400 if you need to get in touch with me before my new e-mail is functional. I look forward to meeting those of you I don’t know yet at IPRs and selection meetings and hopefully at our Symposium in 2017.

Dr. Kurt Preston will join us as Program Manager for Resource Conservation and Climate Change the week after I move.  Prior to SERDP, Kurt has been at the Army Research Office, where he managed an Environmental Science Program, the University of Nebraska, and, most recently, the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Research and Development). We’re pleased that Kurt has chosen to join us and look forward to the direction he will take the RC Program Area in the coming years. As soon as we have final contact information for Kurt, we will send out an e-mail to all our RC PIs.

Thank you all for your patience during the last months. I’m looking forward to an exciting few years with lots of good proposals, good projects, and important results.

- Herb Nelson