Dear Colleagues, In our Faculty Leadership Council meetings last year, we had extensive discussions about Birck Center's strategic planning and how we can become more prominent as a top nanotechnology center internationally. We are fortunate to have a great foundation (excellent faculty and staff, outstanding facility, and healthy financial performance and support from university). When I arrived about seven years ago, in consultation with many of you, we identified three main priorities: (1) space to bring new faculty/centers to Birck (2) replacement of many aging equipment. (3) signature or unique equipment/facility, best in the country, to increase our visibility and attract external partners. We have made significant progress in all three items above. However, we need a much larger fraction of Birck community to take ownership and be directly involved in the planning for future of Birck. I know everybody is extremely busy, but if we don't make an effort to come together and benefit from our collective strengths, what Dana, Yong and I in the leadership could do, will be limited. With the help of Peter Bermel, we are initiating a series of Future BNC meetings this semester, every Thursday 12noon-1pm at Birck 2001 (lunch provided). In the first 20-30 minutes, we may hear from a faculty member who will present their research very broadly, at a level accessible to those outside their immediate areas. This will create space during the remainder of the hour for a high-level discussion of collaboration opportunities that can lead to future centers of excellence and/or also brainstorm about a shared vision for Birck. See below the current schedule. We will update this to have an event every Thursday (except holidays). Please don't hesitate to contact me or others in the leadership if you have any ideas or suggestions or want to present in one of the upcoming meetings. I look forward to see you at the Future Birck meetings. Thanks in advance for your time. Best regards, Ali Preliminary schedule: Date Faculty Topic 1/17/19 David Warsinger Water Purification 2/7/19 Mahdi Hosseini Exploring Quantum Regime of Atom-Photon Dynamics for Applications in Sensing, Communication and Computations 2/14/19 Ali Shakouri Birck Strategic Planning 2/21/19 Yong Chen Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute (PQSEI) 3/21/19 Liang Pan Laser / e-beam nano manufacturing 3/28/19 Mohit Verma Microbiome 4/11/19 Rahim Rahimi Nano Manufacturing 4/18/19 SPS Panel (Tracy Hudson) Industrial contracting models panel discussion: Budgets and IP contracting issues