Infrastructure Cooperation Network
(MAX-INF2)
|
|
Infrastructure Cooperation Network (MAX-INF2) |
|
|---|
| Home | About MAXINF2 | Schools/workshops | Past events | Integration Workshops | Participants | Contact |
|---|
PROJECT PROGRAMME
Title: European Macromolecular Crystallography Infrastructure Cooperation Network2. MANAGING THE NETWORK
This Infrastructure Cooperation Network (ICN) will act to coordinate activities which promote access to research infrastructures required by the macromolecular crystallography (MX) community in Europe. Specifically, it will provide a forum for identifying areas of cooperation centred around the exploitation of Synchrotron Radiation (SR) in life science crystallography (complementary and focussed with respect to the EU Round Table network on Synchrotron Radiation and Free Electron Lasers, referred to throughout as the Round Table) and in extending the software coordination currently centred on CCP4 to a European base. The network is supported by many macromolecular crystallographers and will build on the excellent experience of previous networks organised through the ESF from about 1985 to 1992 and the EC from 1994 to 1998. It will bring together large scale facilities, software developers, academic and commercial users and SMEs involved in instrument production to reflect the current requirement of fast throughput structure determination.
2.1 Scope and Membership(a) The important research infrastructures for the MX community covered in this network are (1) Synchrotron Radiation facilities, (2) software projects and (3) hardware suppliers. Many participants are from SR facilities or are involved with provision of software, whilst other participants are active research scientists dependent on these infrastructures. Several participants are from European pharmaceutical companies.
(b) We propose the network will have 24 members (full list given in Appendix 1), from the following categories:
(c) There will be approximately 32 participants at each coordination meeting: one or two delegates representing each of the 24 members of the network, plus a representative delegated by the coordinator of the Round Table. It is expected that the majority of participants will be at the group leader/senior researcher level, providing a wealth of expertise.
2.2 OrganisationThe ICN is modelled on previous collaborative efforts and brings with it a high level of experience gained within these projects. Partner 1, the coordinator Additional supported by Prof. K.S. Wilson and Prof. M.A. Carrondo who have had extensive involvement with other EU networks. Computing support for establishing and updating www pages will be provided by Mr. Alun Ashton at Daresbury Laboratory.
Annual coordination meetings of the participants will be organised, and there will be provision for extraordinary meetings if the need arises: the latter may compose relevant subgroups of the total members. We expect a total of 5 meetings in the 4 years of the contract. The research cooperation plan suggests a schedule for these meetings, reflecting the importance of arranging a meeting early in the first year of the project, and at approximately equal intervals during the lifetime of the network. However, the actual timing needs to be more flexible, and will aim to be appropriate to the needs of the network, and to coordinate with other meetings of interest to the members. In general the date and venue of each meeting will be decided at the previous meeting.
Each coordination meeting will follow a typical agenda including the following items:
The coordination meetings will be held over two half-days to enable ease of travel to and from the site. The organisation of each meeting will comply with the following rules:
3. JOINT SCIENTIFIC/TECHNOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES AND STUDIES
The emphasis of the network is on the coordination of research efforts rather than funding of research itself. The attached chart shows the Research Cooperation plan, detailing when we expect certain key technical deliverables: meetings, workshops, schools and internet updates, to take place. Between these events there will be significant work for delegated participants organising the teaching workshops and schools. Infrastructure operators will have an excellent opportunity to learn from each other during the integration workshops, and to apply improved techniques at their respective facilities between the meetings.
The coordination meetings and integration workshops form the milestones during the project when progress will be assessed. The coordination meetings will assess the overall progress of the network and update the planned schedule. An important aspect of the integration workshops will be a review of progress in cooperation and collaborative projects since the previous meeting, involving presentations from the parties involved in these activities.
The research cooperation plan provides a tight timetable for initiating the first years events. In year one, we will organise a School at Como and also two workshops. Likely topics of the teaching workshops are ‘Data Collection, including MAD techniques’ and ‘Refinement and Model Building’. The time plan for later workshops is given in the plan, but these will be subject to revision at the coordination meetings when the topics are selected.
3.1.1 Main Tasks
These are described in the attached table
3.1.2 Technical Objectives
(A) Workshops and School
The network will organise and fund two types of meeting, aimed at spreading good practise at state-of-the-art level to the large and rapidly expanding MX community. All meetings will give open access to students from across Europe.
(B) Integration Activities
There are many aspects of infrastructure provision for MX that will benefit from a culture of cooperation. Four areas are detailed, where pooling of resources could generate a critical mass for research leading to significant enhancements in techniques and instrumentation.
3.1.3 Potential benefits
The Schools, Workshops and integration activities have a tremendous role to play in bringing together macromolecular crystallographers from the many European states. In particular, infrastructure operators will benefit from the opportunities to inform and provide training for their users, and to obtain feedback at the same time.
(A) Workshops and Schools
The importance of the workshops and schools is clear; The MX community is expanding fast, giving an increasing number of inexperienced infrastructure users who require training at state-of-the-art level. Previous experience has shown that SR infrastructure operators gain immensely from organising and teaching at the workshops and schools, as they benefit from well-trained users. In addition to transfer of knowledge from the experienced to the inexperienced, the workshops also bring together the most experienced providers in a field, generating collaboration and discussion at the highest level.
(B) Integration Activities
The potential benefits of the integration activities are very high for both participating infrastructure facilities and for other partners. The same advantages apply as for the Schools: enhanced contact between providers and users, and indeed between those concerned primarily with hardware developments at the facilities with those working in software developments to exploit the resulting data. The existence of an increasing number of SR beam lines means that better coordination of the software available at those sites, with GUI’s for running the data acquisition, and MX software to take the user ever closer to on-line analysis of the structure at the site, requires systems that are common to the sites or at least make the differences more transparent to the user.
The virtual centre, once established, will supersede the current rather ad-hoc internet connections between MX groups and, in addition, will provide a valuable channel for keeping the community up-to-date with events, including the workshops and schools organised as part of this ICN. Such a resource, giving direct access to information on relevant European centres, will be useful in many ways, for example, by collating links to group pages advertising job opportunities, and thus promote greater mobility within Europe and introduce a European dimension into scientific careers.
3.2 Organisation(A) Workshops and Schools
All members of the network will be invited to submit proposals to organise small workshops on defined topics. The coordination committee will grade the proposals based on the topic suggested and on the site proposed, with the intention of achieving a good variety of the most important topics, and a wide geographical spread within Europe. In particular, representatives of the infrastructure facilities will be encouraged to propose workshops based at their facility and centred around exploitation of their facilities, as these workshops will have the additional benefit of bringing together facility operators and their users. Not all of these workshops will be based at the large-scale facilities: some will be held in member states which lack such facilities at present, but in which scientists expect to make use of the facilities in other states. After the initial selection, the primary responsibility for the organisation of the seminars and schools will be delegated to the authors of the corresponding proposals. The coordination committee will provide the required administration support as far as its share of the funding is concerned. This will be under the responsibility of the network coordinator.
(B) Integration Activities.
These activities will be delegated to a subset of the ICN participants, who are actively involved in infrastructure provision. Annual formal meetings will be planned to coincide, where appropriate, with teaching workshops (e.g. those arranged at infrastructure facilities on data collection or MAD) so that the best expertise is available for consultation. The purpose of the formal meetings will be updating members of progress in each group, and coordinating further activities. The meetings will provide an excellent forum for infrastructure-based user support scientists to discuss and compare developments. When the meetings can be tied in with teaching workshops this will facilitate user consultation and input and dissemination of information. Organisation of the formal meetings will be the joint responsibility of Partners 1, 5 and 8 and the outcomes of the formal meetings will be reported at the annual coordination meeting. It will also be essential to provide for short visits between infrastructure operators who arrange to cooperate on agreed projects. Such visits will be arranged with the agreement of the coordinator of the network.
Appendix 1
Full List of Network Participants
Synchrotron Sites
Software/Research Groups
Pharmaceutical companies
Equipment Manufacturers (SME)
3.1.1 Main Tasks
|
Tasks |
|||
|
Workshops |
Schools |
Integration Activities |
|
|
Technical Objectives |
Intensive practical training in specific methods e.g. data collection, MAD, refinement, molecular replacement, building into maps. |
Provide forum for young European scientists to experience formal and informal exchanges, at an international level, on state-of-the-art methods and ideas in MX. |
Encourage discussion and cooperation between all classes of infrastructure providers, aimed at providing more automated user-friendly, accessible infrastructure facilities |
|
Description of Work |
|
|
|
|
Partner responsible and man-months per partner over project lifetime. |
Partners 2 (1) and 3 (1) to coordinate the chosen workshop organisers. Each workshop will require 1 man month of effort. |
Partners 9 (1) and 10 (1) to coordinate plus co-opted members for each School. Each School will also require 1-2 man months of effort |
Partners 1 (1), and 5 (1) representing an SR facility and partner 8 (1-2) representing a software development centre. The web site will require 2 man-months. |