APPLIED MECHANICS DIVISION – HAYTHORNTHWAITE FOUNDATION RESEARCH INITIATION GRANTS

Dear Ken, this is a splendid opportunity...congratulations to the AMD for pulling this off! This will be an excellent mechanism to promote young mechanicians. 

I have one feedback. The guidelines indicate that applicants must be tenure-track assistant professors who are within 5 years of the receipt of their doctorates. I personally feel that such a "five year" stipulation is a bit unfair to those assistant professors who join academia (as tenure-track assistant professors) after post-doctoral experience or perhaps a stint in the industry. Some women take family breaks before joining academia and quite often have crossed the 5-year PhD threshold when they join as junior faculty. Why not simply restrict the eligibility to "all tenure-track assistant professors within 5 years of their faculty appointment" rather than reference their PhD date? For this very reason, NSF removed the "5-year from PhD" limit from the NSF CAREER competition.

I urge the executive committee to consider this.