From the Interim Program Manager: May 2020

Sally McFarlane, ARM Program Manager, DOE BER

This has been a challenging spring due to the impacts of COVID-19 on our personal and/or professional lives. I hope you and your families are all healthy and are coping well with staying “safer at home” while working remotely. Since E3SM is a distributed project, many of you are already used to interacting with your colleagues “virtually”, however this is still a challenging time for everyone. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any concerns.

I am pleased that Xujing Davis is now onboard as the new Program Manager for the DOE Earth System Model Development (ESMD) program and the E3SM project. I know that many of you have met Xujing virtually over the past month, and hopefully you will get a chance to meet her in person before too long. During the next few months, I will continue to serve as a resource for Xujing, if needed, but will be stepping away from active participation in E3SM management.

While my assignment as Interim E3SM Program Manager has lasted a little longer than we were all expecting, it has been a great experience, and I have learned a lot about both E3SM and Earth system modeling in general. I hope this experience of cross-program management will help lead to stronger collaborations across BER programs in the future. I have been impressed with the work that all of you are doing within the E3SM project, and look forward to hearing about your continued successes.  

Stay well,

Sally McFarlane