While many organizations slow down in the summer, we had a very busy July.

First, there was paperwork for the National Science Foundation - they are awarding $45,000 to the Academy to facilitate participation by US experts in a workshop, to be held on January 25-28 in Morocco. It is an international workshop on digital information communication, with a focus on implementing a Maghreb Digital Library for Education, Science & Culture. The goal is to have around 50 participants, from Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Mauritania, plus 15-20 from the United States. Our partners to date are UNESCO, the Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education, R&D Maroc, and others. We also have been in conversation with private sector sponsors.

Second, we have been looking for program leaders and speakers for the March 2007 conference in Panama. One of our interns in New York City has been identifying corporate leaders who were also Fulbright scholars, and I have been making calls to them. We also have been in communication with ambassadors and government leaders.

Third, the Chair of our Joint Committee on Clinical Research Ethics has been traveling this summer. In May Dr. Gionis was at a UNESCO Consultation in Bangkok on codes of ethics, in July he was at a UNESCO Consultation in Seoul on teaching ethics, and this week he is in Beijing at the 8th World Congress of Bioethics. At each of the meetings, he has been addressing one of our areas of interest - a better understanding of the existing guidelines for international research and assuring adequate oversight and enforcement of these guidelines.

Fourth, we have been laying the foundation for continued work on a project that was originally sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation - collecting stories from Fulbright scientists on how the Fulbright program influenced them and their work. Over the past year, we have collected some stories on our website and created a directory of other story repositories (primarily Fulbright Commissions). The work led to two new initiatives. The first will be a series of documentaries made at and about Fulbright meetings. The first documentary was made by Mrs. Fulbright (Senator Fulbright’s widow), and is about the Senator's life and his work, and the second documentary was made by us and is about the Academy's conference in Berlin. The second initiative is a multi-volume collection of essays by Fulbright scholars about their Fulbright experiences. The first volume came out this summer and is by foreign Fulbrighters in the US. Several other volumes are under production - I am co-editing one about Fulbright exchanges with Latin America. In the meantime, we continue to collect stories on the website.

Lastly, we have been working to increase our membership. About half of our current members were up for renewal, and so we sent out dues notices at the end of July (the other half is notified in January). Because of our workshop in Morocco and other activities in North Africa and the Middle East, we have been able to offer free memberships to Fulbrighters in that region. While the US restored full diplimatic relations with Libya in May, many say that our diplomatic relations with other countries in the region have declined this year. This means that there is increased value for the type of person-to-person relationships created by the Fulbright program.