David has decided to take the job

David finally managed to find time to phone and tell me the details of his job interview. He said it was a five minute walk from the hotel to the campus of the National Institute of Health. He said 15,000 people work there--I had no idea! His building, the National Cancer Institute, is three years old and six stories high. He said the building has eight electron microscopes in it, three in the section he will work in. He said the interview started with a cup of tea! I didn't even know D drank tea, but he informed he he learned to drink it during that semester in Ireland. The director's first question was, "If we offer you this job, are you going to take it?" Looks like they really want him. Amazing.

He said they showed him the projects they are working on, gave him papers produced there, and showed off all the cool equipment. I'm going to have to look up and learn about "electron tomography." The computer he will work on is some kind of graphics computer with 16 gigabytes of RAM. And there is also a room (?) of processors to do "parallel cluster processing"--I'm not sure if I got that right. He would spend 60-70% of his time with these imaging computers, and the rest in the "wet lab" to get experience with real chemical and biological samples.

He said money did not seem to be a problem, they have lots of it and get more when that runs out. They offered him $4000/yr more than he was expecting, but the total isn't a huge amount considering the high cost of living for the DC area.

Logistics--looks like he won't need a car because of the good metro system. They don't offer any help with housing, but they've directed him to a website for government workers looking for housing, and they told him if he shares with someone else, he shouldn't have to spend more than $700/mo on rent. They do offer health insurance as part of the deal. He starts right after Labor Day.