Dear Colleague:

The 2005 NASA Authorization Bill established the International Space Station (ISS) as the first national laboratory beyond Earth. Because of your special knowledge relevant to the use of space for discovery and development, you are invited to participate in a workshop to begin the process of identifying and crafting pioneering research to be conducted on board the ISS National Laboratory.

The Workshop will be held October 2nd thru 4th, 2007 at the NASA Research Park Training and Conference Center (Building 3) at the NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA. As the chairman for this event, I have arranged for the keynote address to be provided by Mr. William Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate, who is the senior executive responsible for the International Space Station.

The purpose of this workshop is to bring thought leaders together to define a potential suite of worthy investigations and demonstrations that could be conducted in the ISS National Laboratory. A primary objective is to communicate to national decision makers a compelling rationale for ISS National Laboratory studies and to assure support for important research. The scope of discussion is expected to include:

• Research to achieve scientific discoveries enabled by the unique environment of space;
• Projects that demonstrate the applications value of the space environment;
• Knowledge and technology products that benefit humanity;
• Investigations conducted to promote national security; and
• Educational projects that inspire and train the next generation in scientific and technical fields.

I have worked with NASA in this area before and I am convinced that there is considerable value in this research, but that it will take imagination and rigorous but creatively unorthodox thinking like yours to realize its potential. We would also like to invite you to extend this Workshop opportunity to other colleagues that you feel might have compelling ideas for research on the ISS National Laboratory.

Registration and logistics information is located at http://www.alliancespace.net/issnl_overview.php. Space is limited, so we encourage you to register early. If you have any questions regarding the workshop, please contact Bruce Pittman at bpittman@earthlink.net (650-604-4655) or Jim Grady at jgrady@arc.nasa.gov (650-400-8937).

I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Baruch S. Blumberg, M.D., Ph.D
Former Director, NASA Astrobiology Institute
Nobel Laureate, Physiology or Medicine
Fox Chase Cancer Center

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