NASA CFO Approves Conference Sponsorship & Attendance at Greek Resort
Keith’s note: Due to sequestration, civil servants at some agencies have sacrificed with mandatory furloughs. NASA cut travel instead. Yet some NASA civil servants are accepting their portion of the agency’s sacrifice by traveling to a foreign resort at taxpayer expense.
According to this GSFC web page, a conference titled “Explosive Transients: Lighthouses of the Universe” is being held 15-20 September 2013 in Santorini, Greece. The co-chairs of this conference are Neil Gehrels, Fiona Harrison, Chryssa Kouveliotou, and Julie McEnery. Three of them are NASA civil servants (Fiona Harrison is not). The participants of this conference include at least five NASA civil servants: Kouveliotou, Gehrels, Racusin, McEnery, and Cenko.
The meeting is being held at the Petros M. Nomikos Conference Center which is “located at Firostefani on the outskirts of Fira, the capital of Santorini island. It is a neoclassical mansion, overlooking the caldera and the volcano.”. In addition to the meeting NASA is sponsoring an Optional Boat Tour of the Caldera and the Volcano and “Homemade lunch, local wine and fruits will be served on board!”
Indeed, NASA went out of its way to create a poster for the event which shows a black hole rising over the scenic island of Santorini (enlarge).
Three NASA missions are listed as sponsors. The meeting is chaired by NASA civil servants. NASA’s travel policies state that “Foreign conference participation and sponsorship is prohibited unless the conference as a whole is specifically approved by OCFO.” So who in the NASA CFO Office approved this Fall vacation on Santorini?
Keith’s 5 Sep update: This is not the first time that these NASA astronomers have been to Santorini on official business. Gehrels and Kouveliotou were also involved in a 2005 meeting on Santorini and are also shown in a picture from a 2003 event – also on Santorini. Neil Gehrel’s father Tom Gehrels was even involved in the discovery of an asteroid that was eventually named 19034 Santorini – originally discovered in 1960. What a coincidence.
Keith’s 6 Sep update: According to NASA PAO: “When sequestration guidelines were enacted, NASA canceled its planned $10,000 sponsorship of this conference. NASA has not contributed any funding. Also, the agency is sending only six civil servants and their participation has been approved by the Office of the Chief Financial Officer under the required waiver process. All six will be involved in meetings with international partners regarding the future operation of NASA gamma-ray missions such as Swift and NuSTAR. Any of the six participating in the optional boat tour will be required to purchase a ticket at his or her own expense. The conference poster was produced by another conference organizer, not NASA. The Goddard Space Flight Center Web page on which it appears was created when the conference was organized and before restrictions on foreign conference attendance were in place. “Explosive Transients: Lighthouses on the Universe” is one in a series of conferences being sponsored by scientific organizations around the world. The conference is an opportunity not only for science presentations, but also for these organizations to do joint planning of gamma ray missions.”
– Message From The NASA Administrator: New Policies in Response to Sequestration, earlier post
– Bolden Cuts Travel; Buys Toy Telescope Models, earlier post
– Growing Impact of Travel Restrictions, earlier post
– NASA Makes Cuts in Travel Budgets, earlier post
I think you’re over-interpreting this a bit. The folks you mention are members of the SOC (science organizing committee), which is different from the LOC (local organizing committee), and are usually “outside” scientists. And unfortunately for the last couple decades US prominence in extragalactic astronomy has ben fading – it’s now very multinational, and the center to a large extent has shifted to Europe (and also Japan). Almost all these meetings are overseas now, which is why the travel sequestration really puts a knife through all of the science programs at NASA.
I do note the trick mentioned at the end of attaching a “programmatic” NUSTAR meeting. This is an old trick, because programmatic travel is approved differently from conference travel.
Huh? “Over interpreting”? I cite facts. 3 of the 5 sponsor logos are NASA missions. At least 5 NASA civil servants are going – and they are running the meeting. And the official NASA.gov meeting site features sightseeing excursion information. Meanwhile meetings in the U.S. are being cancelled. The rules are clearly not being applied consistently and favor some over others. NLSI and ARC had to cancel the Lunar Science Forum meeting this summer but pulled off a very good virtual meeting.
Keith, you really are barking up the wrong tree here. To put the meeting in context you should also take into account that although Fermi, Swift, and NuSTAR are NASA missions, all have international participation. For example, for Swift a large amount of the software pipelines was written and financed by the Italian space agency (which also contributes a ground station at no cost to NASA for NuSTAR), NuSTAR has contributions from France, Fermi has contributions from several European countries. It is therefore common practice that a fraction of such mission meetings happen in Europe. For example, Fermi typically holds 2-3 consortium meetings in the US and then one in Europe. It turns out that there is quite a good overlap between these teams and the science of these missions, so it makes sense to have a joint meeting of scientists who work with these three missions at the same place.
I know all scientists mentioned by you quite well, working in the same field. The conference subject is very close to their areas of research, and as leaders of the missions it would be detrimental for the missions if they did not represent their missions at this meeting. I have yet to see either of them to go to a conference because of the venue where it is held and the insinuation that they are going to this meeting because it is in Santorini really is unfair. I am quite sure that if you had talked with either of them, you would have found that the fact that the meeting happens to be in Santorini was rather considered a problem because of the increase in travel time to this place, but that they decided despite the remote location because the conference was so important.
Also, in astrophysical conferences it is usually the LOC that is responsible for “running the meeting”. The SOC provides science advise and organizes the invited speakers, but is typically not involved in the organizational details of the meeting.
I am not sure what point you think you are trying to make. You could make the same argument for every meeting NASA has – nearly all NASA programs have significant international participation – and yet others follow the rules – and meetings have been cancelled or done virtually. As for your statement that the meeting just “happens to be in Santorini” Yea right – as if meeting locations are chosen at random and this world class resort location just happened by chance.
Keith, if you had written it this way, fine. However, you start the article with the statement “Yet some NASA civil servants are accepting their portion of the agency’s sacrifice by traveling to a foreign resort at taxpayer expense.” This clearly implies that you think that the fact that the guys are going to the conference is that it is at a resort (which is not true, the accommodation offered is all in small and cheap hotels). The statement that I am making is that they are going there because the meeting is among the most relevant ones for the missions that they represent. The examples of science that you quote such as the Lunar Science Forum are areas where the field is much more dominated by the USA. In high energy astrophysics the field is much more even.
As to the place: end of September is end of season in Greece. If you look at the conference web pages, there are quite a number of cheap hotels offered (e.g., 45 EUR for a single room ($60), including breakfast). It is quite a common trick in Europe to have meetings in such places off season. I have been involved with quite a number of project meetings on Majorca, Tenerife, and Crete out of the season which we organized there because they ended up much cheaper than in more central places. Because these places are tourist destinations, they’re quite easy to reach from most places in Europe and typically travel to these places is also cheaper than to the larger cities because of competition from the charter airlines.
You are just an apologist for this sort of behavior – and you do so anonymously. All the people involved should be aware of these travel restrictions and ought to show a little more sensitivity given how other travel has been cancelled and the scrutiny place on it.
Look at the poster – they are all but bragging about going to Santorini ! The NASA CFO has denied far more routine travel requests domestically which makes their approval of this trip to a sunny Greek island even more baffling.
I haven’t heard from NASA (I have asked).
keith, I’ve registered with disqus with my standard email address, this info should be available to you, shouldn’t it? It contains my full name.
You have configured Disqus to show “gx301”. I am not going to publicly reveal your name – that’s up to you to do.
Keith,
You are wrong, and your tone is insulting. If you are going to write about subjects you tangentially understand, you should grow a tougher skin to take informed responses.
Oh, and my name is Carlos E. Del Castillo, PhD
Hmm I was doubtful. Smaller airports really jack up the price of airfare in the U.S. .. but it’s not as far fetched as I thought. I was surprised you could get there with just 2 stops from DC. Still the bigger city is cheaper.
Washingto DC (IAD) to Santorini Thira (JTR) – $1,147.99, 2 stops
Washingto DC (IAD) to Athens, Greece (ATH) – $825.19, 1 stop
” you would have found that the fact that the meeting happens to be in
Santorini was rather considered a problem because of the increase in
travel time to this place, but that they decided despite the remote
location because the conference was so important.”
LOL.
<sarcasm> I’m sure this caused a lot of anguish with them.</sarcasm>
Go ahead and pull the other one.
Even after all the bureaucratic shanagans I have seen over the last 30 years, I don’t ever think I’ve seen arrogance like this. They really need a lesson in what it means to be a civil servant.
I will hazard a guess that the conference venue was set up several years ago in collaborations with the European partners, who think that when they are “equal” partners, then some meetings should happen in Europe, and not always at a location convenient to Americans. As pointed out by gx, they often pick resort locations during the off-season when hotels are cheap.
I expect they decided that it would be easier to stick with the plan, despite the hammering of NASA travel, than to bail out at the last minute.
However, that’s a guess: I’m not an astrophysicist, and I have no personal knowledge about this one. I will bet, though, that a lot of American researchers who had firmly intended to participate will be missing.
a few months ago a colleague had his travel to a conference that he co-founded disapproved by HQ because the optics of having one NASA participant at the conference in Spain during sequestration would be bad. The location was international because like you said it rotated between the partners and this was their turn to host. Apparently pulling out of the Keynote speech and chairing panels as the founding member was not an optics issue compared to him going. heck the conference even offered to sponsor his travel to avoid NASA spending dollars on it during sequestration, but no dice. Now 5 guys are going to Greek resort, SMH.
It was fairly insane in NASA travel-land a few months ago. Denying approval for trips that would be of no cost to the government, but left our hosts out of pocket, happened to many of us. It was clearly of little benefit to anyone and I am glad that we seem to be past that.
I agree that perception is important. We might need to consider encouraging our European colleagues to host meetings in large cities rather than off-season resorts. While this would be more expensive for everyone (increased accommodation costs etc), it would avoid the perception that the trip was a vacation.
I agree on the “insane” part. I saw examples where attendance was denied for a conference in the same city as the employee. And meetings canceled where >90% of the attendees were from the host institution. Don’t get me started on the time I was kept flying in circles around Europe so that I didn’t violate a layover rule. For the most part NASA travel rules have always strongly resembled a Magic 8-ball, but now they re-roll it every couple weeks even on travel already in process.
So it costs more for sure to have it in a major city? I bet it’s less in airfare at least, but the rest I don’t know.
My experiences with conferences is that planning generally starts about a year out. And nobody buys a plane ticket that far in advance so there is always some flexibility on location. Mid Sept is definitely towards the end of tourist season, which actually ends in late Sept. I think NASA did the necessary thing by withdrawing its 10k support. I don’t, however, think that 6 employees going is a great display of austerity measures to the American public. People spend their entire lives saving for a trip to the Greek isles and these folks are going on the public’s tab. And truth be told, the work would get done whether they went or not.
Most of the conferences I’ve been involved with started planning *way* more than a year out– by a year before the conference the first announcement and call for papers should be out. Selecting the site is usually two years before that. For an international conference, with negotiation between many entities, I expect that the decision of which country is hosting takes place even earlier.
I have organized and chaired conferences. Planning starts at least two years in advance.
I suspect that the strong reactions against this conference are more visceral than fact-based.
Carlos E. Del Castillo
OK, I’ll bite, but please don’t bite my head off, Keith. I can see the mission logos on the poster, and I can see that NASA project/mission scientists’ time is involved in the scientific organizing committee (SOC), but nowhere do I see any firm indication that NASA is in any direct financial way sponsoring this conference. Do you have evidence of that from anywhere other than the Website?
Is someone with read access to the NASA conference tracking system willing to comment on this?
I don’t understand the point of the Update – there was no sequestration in 2005.
Also, Neil Gehrels would have been approximately 5 years old in 1960.
The asteroid was discovered by Gehrels’ father Tom. Why do these folks keep going back to NASA meetings on a Greek island resort? Seems to be force of habit – unaffected by the sequester rules that have led to the cancellation of many other NASA meetings – meetings not held on sunny resorts …
The bottom line its not about cost but about perception of CS having “too” much fun on Taxpayer dollar. Trips to Moscow in the winter may not be any cheaper but in some cases may be viewed as hazardous duty.
All six will be involved in meetings with international partners
regarding the future operation of NASA gamma-ray missions such as Swift
and NuSTAR.
And as we all know, a Greek resort is the only place one can hold such discussions.
A greek resort that has the nasty habit of blowing itself up every 10,000 years or so …
This conference is the latest in a long sequence related to high energy astrophysics. They were and maybe still are fundied via NATO as part of an effort to spread scientific resaerch and encourage cooperation with Greece and Turkey. Hence the visits to such exotic locations as Santorini, Crete, Antalya …
I have to agree with comments in defense of this and all research conferences. Attendance to research conference is an important part of research work. One should not have to re-litigate this issue. Do not take my word for it. Just review a recent memorandum from the National Science and Technology Council on the subject.
Regarding the venues, Science is an international affair. Some conferences rotate between Europe, Asia, and the Americas for fairness and to increase participation from more countries – also to facilitate participation for students from the host country. Large conferences need to be organized in places with proper infrastructure (IT support, enough conference space, enough hotel rooms, safety, and convenience for travel). Resorts often comply with all these requirements, and are not necessarily more expensive than other venues. One of the most expensive and least convenient conferences I have attended was in New York hotel.
Regarding the poster, this subject is not worth the pixels on the screen. Posters are created and distributed to science departments to advertise the conference because organizers want people to attend. Some times a poster is just that, a poster.
All these travel restrictions are just creating more work, and I suspect are not saving any money. The funds for research travel are often procured through peer-reviewed research proposals, and represent a minuscule fraction of a typical research grant (in my last grant ~3% to cover travel for 3 people to 2-3 conferences). Moreover, NASA researchers compete with academia for the same funds. Yet, academic researchers can travel freely. I have to conclude that these restrictions are more about form than substance. I also have to conclude that the opposition against this particular conference is mostly a knee-jerk reaction colored by ignorance.
Finally, these travel restrictions and other ill conceived regulation (IT restrictions, full cost accounting implementation, no salary increases, etc), are likely affecting recruitment at the agency. I recently returned to NASA, and is not the same place it was 6 years ago. Several colleagues at the agency even questioned my sanity! I also heard the case of an excellent researcher who recently declined an opportunity to join the agency because of all the restrictions. Can one imagine that? A scientists rejecting an opportunity to joint The NASA?
Can we go back to work now?
G.