Sastry Pantula, dean of Cal State San Bernardino’s College of Natural Sciences and a former division director at the National Science Foundation (NSF), will be a featured speaker at the launching webcast of the California State University’s STEM NET, an affinity group dedicated to harnessing the power of the CSU’s 23 campuses to create high quality STEM research programs for its students and faculty. The webcast will be Friday, Feb. 1, from 9 a.m. to noon. Pantula, who will give a 20-minute talk, will participate from Long Beach, where he is also attending “First-Term Reflections: Restructuring First-Year Writing, Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning,” organized by the CSU Chancellor’s Office. The STEM NET affinity group, which consists of some of the presidents, provosts and deans from various CSU campuses, was also created to strengthen student and faculty success through advancing cutting-edge research discoveries within a collaborative and cross-disciplinary community. It establishes a vehicle to share results and learn from each other for significant discoveries. Pantula, who joined CSUSB in July, will talk about working at the NSF, its policies and procedures. He served for three years as director of the NSF Division of Mathematical Sciences before serving as a professor of statistics at Oregon State University, where he was dean of the College of Science from August 2013 to August 2017. Pantula has spent more than 30 years as a statistics professor at North Carolina State University (NCSU), where he began his academic career in 1982. At NCSU, he also served as the director of graduate programs, the head of the department of statistics and the director of the Institute of Statistics. He served as the president of the American Statistical Association in 2010. The live webcast program is as follows: WELCOME ADDRESSES: • Chancellor Timothy White• Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs Loren Blanchard• President Leroy Morishita, CSU East Bay• Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Ganesh Raman CSU FACULTY PANELS: • Building STEM Capacity with Unique HSI Collaborations (Pomona, Sacramento, Fullerton, San Diego)• Connecting with CSU System wide Synergies (Chico, Cal Poly, Stanislaus)• Developing a Leadership Role in STEM Research and Education (Fullerton, San Francisco, Cal Poly)• National Priorities for Funding STEM Education and Research Programs (San Bernardino, Long Beach) OBJECTIVES: • Learn about the new STEM NET affinity group• Gain best practices for seeking funding, building partnerships, and navigating the submission process• Seek interdisciplinary and multi-campus collaborative opportunities Visit the CSU STEM Collaboratives Project website for more information on its programs.For more information on Cal State San Bernardino, contact the CSUSB Office of Strategic Communication at (909) 537-5007 and visit the Inside CSUSB website.