A rectangle
NUCLEI banner

The NUCLEI Charter

1. Purpose of the Charter

This Charter establishes the functions, organizational structure, and responsibilities within the NUCLEI Project.

2. Project Director

The Director is appointed by the Agencies and has the overall responsibility for the NUCLEI project. He/she is the primary point of contact with the Agencies.

3. Co-Directors

The Co-Directors are nominated by the Project Director and approved by the Agencies. Their principal responsibility is to assist the Project Director with project management.

4. NUCLEI Council

The Council consists of the Director and co-Directors and additional members drawn from the Collaboration. The additional members are nominated by the Director and co-Directors and approved by the voting members (Sec.5) of the Collaboration. The Council represents different subfields and institutions of NUCLEI science. The Council oversees project integration and coordination among the subfields. It coordinates the project timetables and deliverables. It also makes recommendations to DOE regarding the scientific direction of the project and its budget.

5. Voting Members

The NUCLEI collaboration members who are Principal Investigators (PIs), co-PIs, or senior investigators are voting members.

6. Procedures

a. The Council will conduct its business in a democratic manner with one vote per Council member.

b. Vacancies on the Council must be replaced immediately.

c. The Council shall meet monthly by conference calls, or more often as needed. The conference calls are organized by the Project Director. The agenda for each conference call will be posted on computingnuclei.org at least 3 business days prior to the call to enable consultations between voting members and Council members as needed. Minutes of the Council meetings are to be posted on computingnuclei.org. Draft minutes are to be placed on computingnuclei.org within one week following the conference call. Final minutes are posted within one day of the vote to accept the minutes at the following conference call.

d. To make the progress transparent and to integrate science across tasks, reports on the progress in NUCLEI subfields, presented at the Council meetings, are to be posted on computingnuclei.org.

e. A voting member may propose agenda items for Council meetings by contacting any Council member.

f. Any voting member may attend a Council meeting at the invitation of a Council member.

g. Certain Council meetings may be declared "open" for any voting member to attend without specific invitation. These will be indicated when the agenda is posted on the web site.

7. NERSC Computational Resources

To help assure adequate computing resources, a NERSC coordinator will be appointed by the Director. The task is to obtain allocations from NERSC, maintain a NERSC repository, and distribute allotments as needed for NUCLEI computation.

8. Website

The collaboration website, computingnuclei.org, shall serve as a communication tool and as an outreach window into NUCLEI science. It is supervised by a member of NUCLEI appointed by the Council and maintained by a communication coordinator.

9. Annual Meeting

The NUCLEI collaboration meeting is to be held annually. It is organized by the NUCLEI Director and co-Directors or designated collaboration members. The reports presented during the meeting summarize scientific progress of the Project and serve as a basic input to the Continuation Annual Report.

10. Foreign Collaborators

NUCLEI collaborates closely with a number of foreign efforts and individual scientists sharing similar scientific goals. Such collaborations include joint software developments and benchmarking. Representatives of Foreign Collaborating Projects are invited to attend the NUCLEI annual meeting. The license status of joint software developments is subject to 12b.

11. Continuation Annual Report

The Continuation Annual Report is put together by the Project Director and co-Directors. It contains i) scientific progress, ii) new work plans, and iii) proposed budgets for the following year.

12. Deliverables

The main deliverables of NUCLEI are publications, reports, conference presentations, and computer codes.

a. Publications and Talks: All deliverables should contain the acknowledgement to the appropriate DOE Grant number(s).

b. Computer codes: The final versions of computer codes (i.e. meeting all benchmarks required) developed under NUCLEI are to be released as open source software, using one of the standard open source licenses (GNU, BSD-like, etc.) to ensure that the community as a whole benefits from the software developed under NUCLEI funding. Releases are expected to contain documentation, installation instructions for each platform on which the code runs, and input and output files for test cases.

13. Amendments

a. Amendments to this charter must originate from the NUCLEI Council or from a group of five voting members sending statements of support to the Council.

b. Amendments to the charter may be adopted by a vote of voting members (plurality required) or unanimous vote of the Council. If the amendment passes by Council vote, a group of ten at-large voting members may request a vote by the entire Collaboration and the amendment in question is suspended until the vote can be held. Upon notification of the passage of the amendment, all voting members will have two weeks to request the vote.

14. Ratification

This Charter shall be accepted as a document providing guidance and rules of operation for the NUCLEI Collaboration following a ratification vote in which 2/3 voting members favor adoption of the charter. The NUCLEI Council shall administer the ratification vote.