MSG Meeting 071002 (That's 2007-October-2nd)!!

Nhu Nguyen  (new MSG president)

Nhu: Next month, Cameron Thrash will give a talk.
Cameron: We need to have a meeting to vote on who to invite for Symposium
speakers, that takes a lot of time. Maybe we should have a separate
meeting? Maybe instead let's bump me (Cameron); I'll talk at the January
meeting, which we don't have anyone signed up for anyway.
Kelly Wrighton (who is the Symposium Chair): I will send a message out to
MSG soon with warning to think about symposium speakers.
Let's try and schedule the meeting around the Microbiology first years so
that they can attend (currently they cannot because our meetings coincide
with "Profs-on-Parade").

Steven Smith is signed up to bring food next time.

Budget:  Let's limit food budget to $55 per meeting, to keep up with the
budget cuts we're getting.

Symposium Sponsors: Kelly want to meet with John Taylor first to find out
about the status of funding before she goes ahead with anything else.
We'll talk about budget more definitively at the next MSG meeting.

Symposium Positions: essential ones are
(1)finance committee (work with Justin Richner and Kevin Hockett, who did
it last time, but are second years now and will be busy with Qualifying
Exams). Need two people. The First-years will still have classes,
unfortunately. The budged is likely to stand, so it might be easier.  It's
a good opportunity to find out how money moves in the department. Kelly
will hit the group eventually if she doesn't find anyone to do fill these
positions, but spread the word ahead of time.  If our budget is limited
this time, other sources of funding might be considered, or can we limit
where people come from? (Find out from John Taylor definitively). We can
decide what we want to do once we have a hard number.  Private funding was
opposed last time.
(2) Marketing: compile info from other schools, instigate this committee
(more people will actually do the work). Sergio Covarrubias (Glaunsinger
Lab) is interested. Kelly will ask specific people to do poster stuff, but
let's wait until we know the speakers. Printing $: it's safe, as far as we
know. (Comes from the Keasling Lab).  ($1500 - we don't use all of it, but
can't use it for anything else, only printing. Posters costed $500,
abstract books needed too. We ran out of poster quick last time (60), it
would be nice to have more around, but 100 was done the year before and
that was too many (100). Maybe we should consider 80 this time?  Anyway,
Matt Matozzi in the Keasling lab is usually the contact for this, but
since he might be finishing his degree soon, we should get someone to
learn how to get this money.  Chijioke Joshua (CJ) just joined the
Keasling Lab. Kevin will talk to CJ about this.

Presentation by Matt Melnicki on his Ph.D. research (midpoint) regarding
Physiology of Purple Bacterial Hydrogen Production.

(Chelsea Witte brought food, kept the cost gracefully just under the limit!!)