Re:
come spend some time in florida
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Barnaby Marsh < > wrote:
Dear Jeff:
I finally heard from Chuck Harper, who is visiting anthropological sites in South Africa at the moment and has been a little hard to reach.
Regarding Eastern Europe, not too much luck- these are the names I got, and I don't know any of them, so probably not too useful:
• Enn Kasak, Associate professor of philosophy of science, PhD, Tallinn University, Estonia
• Ioana-Carmen Popescu, Ph. D. Organic Chemistry Center “Constantin Nenitescu” from Romanian Academy,
Bucharest, Romania [redacted]
• Dr. lulian Rusu I I Professor at Technical University Iasi, Faculty of Industrial Chemistry
• Stefan Trausan-Matu, Professor, "Politehnica" University of Bucharest, Computer Science Department, Bucharest, Romania; and Principal researcher, Romanian Academy Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Bucharest, Romania http://www.racai.ro/~trausan]
Chuck suggested Tegmark at MIT, and I think that we might be able to do something related to a new grants competition programs that look at creativity, innovation, and efficiency in the context of biological membranes, but the question is who are the people?
By the way I had a quick follow-up chat with Krauss in Arizona- what he is doing is important, and I have encouraged him to think about long-term directions/strategies (bigger than simply raising the endowment and convening famous people, which is only a start). I'll reconnect with him soon.
Barnaby
how much is actually needed and on what time schedule? also , i look forward to your trip
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Barnaby Marsh < > wrote:
A visit to WPB in a few weeks (2nd week in June) would work nicely. I've been working with Martin and Harvard. They are not doing much at all. I'm going to put $6M of our grant in an external philanthropic vehicle (either a DAF or simply an extemal account; with will save the project $600k in overhead) and put about $5M through Harvard, but nonetheless his center needs to be viable. As before, we can pick up the costs of administration but he needs a real solution for the rent, which we can't fund because of charter restrictions. If we can't do that he has to close PED. There is no other option. Perhaps we could get together some co-funders that could cover the rent part. I'm going to try Richard Watson of Cleveland gave Harvard $2M a few years back (and who is interested in game theory), and a few others that I know. Would you be in a position to make any additional contributions at all? Does anyone come to mind who Martin might approach (and who we might talk to first?). I want to make this world Ideas welcome... —S.
16th ,,,would be perfect.
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 4:27 PM, Barnaby Marsh <> wrote:
There is lots to discuss regarding other work, interesting people, etc...how about spending an afternoon together, the 15th or 16th of June? Does either of these dates work for you?
About Martin, these are the details: his rent and the associated overhead that Harvard takes is about $400k per year, or $2m over 5 years (this is absolute minimum to keep him there and operating); his additional amounts for scholarship/scholars outside of the Templeton grant is about twice that amount; his current running budget is $1.2M per year (or $6M over 5 years). When we made the $11M grant, we though that this would scale up and expand his exceptional center and work, so if we could somehow raise $6M to add our $11M to that would be ideal. That is what I think we should aim for.
Also, just FYI, I'm going to be asking Templeton to approve an additional $2M. supplement for broad philosophical/applied questions after year 2 of the project, so this will further amplify the importance of Martin's work, which can not be understated- he is a genius.