Organizational Structure

External Advisory Bodies

Board of Directors (BoD)

The formation of a third-party BoD was accomplished within the first quarter of iPlant’s Year 1, as planned and described in early project documents. The BoD is a community-representative board that is elected via a “bootstrapping process” where a community-representative Nominating Committee assembled by the Faculty Advisors with NSF oversight is utilized for selection of board members. One-third of the BoD is refreshed every year on a rotating basis and is done so by the Nominating Committee. 

The role of the BoD is to provide oversight of, and advice to, iPlant Executive Management and to evaluate, prioritize, and make recommendations on the selection of community proposals for Grand Challenge Workshops and Grand Challenge Collaboration Projects. The BoD also makes major decisions for the allocation of iPlant resources to specific Grand Challenges. The BoD meets regularly and communicates mainly through email correspondence.

Current BoD

Education, Outreach, and Training Advisory Committee (EOTAC)

The EOTAC currently includes 14 members. The first committee meeting was held on January 30-31, 2009 at Biosphere 2 and resulted in a set of recommendations for consideration by the iPlant EOT team. A second EOTAC meeting was held on September 12, 2009 in Chicago, IL.

Current EOTAC

Scientific Opportunities Team (SOT)

SOT Objectives 2009 - 2010

• To consider the nature of what the new Grand Challenge (GC) proposals should be, with foci on:
  • Bringing the Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology (EEOB), and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) communities together around a shared vision for plant CI
  • Integration of the use of CI into the broad plant community through new education activities.
• To engage the community to facilitate the generation of such new GC proposals with the objective of ensuring that the options presented to the iPlant Board of Directors for new GCs are the best possible and most broadly representative. The iPlant Board of Directors would still have final authority to decide on which GC proposals move forward.
• To develop the Year 3 iPlant Conference (Summer 2010) with a focus on facilitating the first two objectives.

Members of iPlant SOT

Internal Advisory Bodies

Executive Team

The Executive Team consists of Steve Goff (PI and Project Director) and Dan Stanzione (Co-PI). The Executive Team was formed to provide greater efficiency in decision-making, communication, and implementation in response to recommendations resulting from the March 2009 Board of Directors' meeting. 

Internal Faculty Advisory Board (IFAB)

The IFAB comprises the seven original project Co-PIs (Sudha Ram, Lincoln Stein, Greg Andrews, Doreen Ware, Steve Rounsley, Sue Brown, and Vicki Chandler). This group is representative of each of iPlant’s major project sites and aspects of the project (together with Dan Stanzione representing TACC). The group meets monthly, as needed. The primary function of the IFAB is to advise the Executive Team, upon request, on topics such as project initiatives and organization, community relations, and major decisions.

Cyberinfrastructure Advisory Team (CIAT)

The CIAT includes five members (Greg Andrews, Sudha Ram, Nirav Merchant, Lincoln Stein, and Doreen Ware). The CIAT meets monthly for strategic planning and will include an additional all-hands CI meeting for dissemination. The CIAT advises Dan Stanzione regarding the CI development from the faculty perspective. The CIAT was previously named the CI Management Team and advised the Director of Cyberinfrastructure Development. The migration to the new title and the addition of a team member (Ware) occurred during the reorganization phase in Spring 2009.

Social Science Team (SST)

The Social Science Team is engaged in activities focused on investigating the integration of CI into plant science and the impact of collaboration on individuals. In addition, the team lead participates in the project as an IAB member and provides support to other teams (e.g. EOT) when necessary. The team continues to handle IRB duties, literature reviews, and data collection specific to the research questions. Team products to date include: a preliminary paper on changes in science due to CI has been accepted at the Hawaiian International Conference on Systems Sciences, a draft paper has been prepared that analyzes publications in The Plant Cell and Plant Physiology using social network analysis and linguistic techniques, a literature review on virtual team development and evolution is being drafted for journal submission, and a social network survey site has been created and implemented. The Social Science Team continues to collaborate with the external evaluators, particularly focusing on integrating data collection events so as not to duplicate efforts.