If you’ve been wondering how AI can support innovation, food safety, and nutrition and what are the associated challenges, consider attending the upcoming JIFSAN webinar. JIFSAN director, Jianghong Meng, tells me that more 150 people have registered and the webinar is still a month away. I have a conflict but registered to receive the link for the recording. I am a strong believer that AI tools can help improve my efficiency, allowing me to focus my time better.
I am spending the first part of this week in Philadelphia attending the annual Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) meeting. In attendance are a number of leaders from UMD. Due to travel challenges faced by many of the registrants, it is a bit easier to find people than normal. You can guess the general theme of the conference and many sessions, navigating change, uncertainty, and ambiguity. We arrived to the meeting over the weekend, having received a few surprises before departure. Among them, Cornell University’s settlement with the government for $60M that included half of the settlement money remaining at the university to invest in agriculture research. I was caught off guard by a Supreme Court’s halt on a lower court’s ruling that SNAP benefits must be paid out in full for November.
Last week ended with a visit to our Plant Science and Landscape Architecture department faculty and staff. I found it to be a good discussion. Hopefully I will have opportunity to return in the spring as we ran out of time. I have a few more departments to visit before the end of the fall semester. It is important to me to hear from faculty and staff, in unit settings and less structured settings like drop-ins, hallway conversations, and lunch gatherings.
I appreciated the Extension event last week and have received strong feedback that we should have similar events in the future. Thanks to Jinhee Kim and the organizing team for pulling it together. As I mentioned in my remarks, I was pleased to see a full room. Perhaps something like this should be held annually, if not twice a year. Input is welcome.
It is hard to believe that ‘closed-toe shoe season’ is here and we are already working on the college winter celebration and a winter greeting card. Busy days make time fly by and there are a couple on the calendar this week that are particularly full.