I wanted to take the opportunity to share some highlights and the preliminary project briefing line-up for the upcoming CNI Spring Member Meeting, scheduled for March 25-26, 2024, in San Diego, California. This information is a little later than usual, for which I apologize. We will keep registration for the meeting open for a few extra days, until February 28. All the information here will be included and expanded upon in the upcoming meeting roadmap, but I wanted to make this available now.
 
We have a fantastic keynote speaker whom I’ve been hoping to entice to CNI for a long time: Dan Reed, Presidential Professor of Computational Science at the University of Utah and Chair of the US National Science Board. The most important thing to know about Dan is that, through the various roles he has had in his career, he has an enormously broad and deeply informed view of not just developments in computational science, but also their interplay with the practice and communication of science, the evolution of science policy, and how science policy fits into the broader national political and policy spheres. Dan will share some of these perspectives with us in his keynote, which will open the conference on Monday at about 1:00 pm.
 
For more on Dan and his plenary, see: https://www.cni.org/mm/spring-2024/plenary-sessions-s24
 
Dan has also very graciously agreed to do a follow-on breakout in conversation with me later on Monday, which will allow us and the audience to explore a few topics in greater depth and/or examine additional issues of particular interest to the CNI community.
 
There is a wonderful set of project briefings scheduled, including a special invited update on the National Research Platform (NRP), which should reflect some of the developments covered at the 5th NRP Workshop taking place in San Diego the preceding week. Here is a preliminary list; there will likely be some minor changes, and we will be sharing descriptions and a full schedule shortly:
 
https://www.cni.org/mm/spring-2024/project-briefings-breakout-sessions-s24
 
I’m also trying something new for the conference closing. We’ve adjusted the overall meeting schedule to accommodate more breakouts and will not be doing a formal closing plenary for this meeting. Instead, we’ll close the meeting with a lightly structured half-hour interactive session, which will allow meeting participants to share what most captivated or surprised them at the meeting and any big takeaways. My hope is that this will leave conference participants with a greater sense of synthesis and engagement, of shared insights and collaborative purpose. We will be inviting short reflections from all who wish to share them (or at least as many as we have time to accommodate). This session will not be recorded.
 
Along with the entire CNI team, I look forward to seeing you in San Diego in a few weeks.
 
 
Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI