DART News January 2006

This is the first of hopefully many DARTnews, to let all project members know the latest!

DART Work Packages

I haven’t received much news to report, due to most people being on leave over the Xmas/New year break. Most Chief Investigators (CIs) are still looking for additional staff to fill their team, which is more difficult due to the time of year.

Andrew and I have a meeting next week with staff from the Caulfield School of Information Technology (CSIT or SIMS as noted in the original DART bid document) to utilize a number of their doctoral students.

Demonstrators

After the sterling work done by Ian, the next stage is to link up with the research experts in each institution and employ programmers to start putting the demonstrators together. Ian has identified Mal Heron (climate) and Murray David (crystallography) in JCU, Jane has identified Jenny Martin (crystallography) in UQ, while I have been chasing up Amanda Lynch (climate) and James Whisstock (crystallography) at Monash. Since late last year, I have been trying to get Amanda and James to attend the afternoon session of the Feb 7 workshop in Melbourne, but Amanda is unable to attend or send any of her team (they are all at a conference!) I’m still trying to contact James.

DART Project Office

The first few weeks on the job have been busy trying to fast-track a number of things – such as appointing an Admin Officer, getting the Demonstrator program to the Board by mid January, writing Position Descriptions (PDs) for research workers on the Monash work packages, negotiating for space to house them, discovering how Monash manages financial transactions and hiring people, etc.

The results are….

• The Demonstrator proposal was circulated to Board members on January 11 (before Ah Chung, David, Xiaofang, etc. went on the China tour) and agreed via circulation on January 16. While recognizing it was a rush due to the need to meet the expected NCRIS decision timelines early this year, I also apologize for the lack of communication at this difficult time of year.

• An offer was made to one person to start on the DA3 work package (Hew 7), while Jane subsequently offered them the PM role at UQ (Hew 8), however the person then chose to join the Bluenet project in Tasmania – also a MERRI funded project!

• Interviews are scheduled with 10 potential research staff at Monash on Feb 6 when Andrew is back from leave. Several of them were potentially suitable for other WPs, with Jane following up one person willing to relocate to Brisbane. I also circulated four of the CVs to Ian, David, Xiaofang and Asad.

• A Hew 5 PD has been written and approved for an Admin Officer in the Project Office. Hew 6 and 7 PDs were also written and approved, with less luck getting a Hew 8 through the system quickly. I also assisted Asad get a Hew 6-7 PD approved for his WPs, with imminent appointments about to be made.

• Discussions have been held with the web developer used by the ARROW project, to setup a simple DART website and logo, to meet the needs for the project’s first year.

• Assistance was given to Jane in recruiting a Project Manager (PM) for the UQ DART team. An offer is expected to be made early this week, after Jane interviewed 4 people.

• JCU are close to offering a part time role for a Project Director at JCU.

Road trip to Townsville

While organized by the e-Research staff at Monash, I accompanied Nathan Bailey and Richard Spindler (DART SI4) to Townsville Monday this week, while Ian organized a full day of presentations and talks with a number of his research students, included Russell Sim (‘plone’ and AA4), Mathew Wyatt (DMQ1) and Tristan King (DMQ5). It was very informative and productive for both sides, especially for the Monash people.

DEST Reporting

The first financial report is due January 28. I have a copy of the ARROW report to understand what DEST require, plus I’ve met with internal Monash finance people to gather the correct information.

Administrivia

I am still working on getting funding transfers to UQ and JCU, as well as internally to the Monash Chief Investigators.

I have circulated a couple of useful documents – an organizational chart for DART (but no feedback received yet), plus a short summary of the DART WPs.

Planning has also started internally on a formal project management methodology (Thomsett).

Issues/Problems

The most difficult problem with the DART project will be the time pressure to complete all the work by the end of the year, plus being able to recruit good research staff in the first place to work on the different work packages.

Another problem is lack of effective communication – letting everyone know what is happening, what issues need to be addressed by what team, etc, etc. Another problem will be the coordination of technical issues between the work packages. Hopefully the plone website at JCU will be an invaluable tool to assist us with both these areas. Ian has offered to explain the features of plone to the CIs at the Feb 7 workshop.

But the hardest problem to solve that I see facing the DART project overall is getting the time of each Chief Investigator. All are very actively involved in many research projects (not just DART), attending and presenting numerous papers to conferences around the globe, plus dealing with the usual workload of academic life – teaching, managing research students, administration, etc. As has already been demonstrated, it will not always be possible to get everyone together at the same time, let alone in the same place.

Coming…

An agenda for the Feb 7 workshop will be circulated soon, plus details of the Feb 8 lunch-time meeting during the VALA 2006 conference in Melbourne. Details will also be circulated soon for the next DART Board and Technical meetings on Feb 24 in Brisbane.

Jeff McDonell
DART Project Director

Jan 25, 2006