Page Comparison

...

Colleagues are invited to submit proposals for contributions to Rubin Observatory commissioning as fully integrated members of Rubin's Systems Integration Test and Commissioning (SITCOM) team. Proposals are welcome from colleagues who seek new funding through this call, and also from colleagues who do not seek new funding. Given the significant opportunity to gain expertise with early data through this call and the limited new funding that is available, we anticipate that the amount of “volunteer effort” will volunteer effort per person will be ~20-50% of an individual’s research time (i.e. modest fractional contributions are welcome and encouraged), and that the sum of the volunteer effort across the UK community may exceed the amount of “funded funded effort.

This opportunity follows LSSTC’s the Rubin Observatory's acceptance of the commissioning component of LSST:UK's In-kind proposal to Rubin Observatory, which incorporated input from the 21 UK groups that submitted Expressions of Interest (EoI) in response to the August 2020 call for interest. The proposal submission deadline will be followed by an internal UK review of proposals, with a remit that includes appropriate peer review of any funded effort requested in the proposals. This will be followed by preparation of a full UK proposal that integrates all accepted individual proposals, and submission of this full proposal to SITCOM leadership in late October 2021. The overall aim is for the UK contingent in the SITCOM team to be selected by the end of 2021 and to commence on-boarding and training in early 2022. The following table summarises this timeline:

2. Scope

Whilst we envisage that most of the proposals submitted in response to this call will be from groups that submitted an EoI, proposals from groups that did not submit an EoI are very welcome. We encourage discussion and collaboration between groups when developing proposals in response to this call, and include a summary of the EoIs submitted in 2020 in Appendix 1 so as to facilitate such discussion.

The text of the Commissioning component of the UK’s in-kind proposal (that was accepted in full by LSSTC the Rubin Observatory and SITCOM) is also included as Appendix 2, so as to set out the current status of thinking on the UK’s commissioning contribution. Colleagues are strongly encouraged to refer this appendix to gain a sense of how thinking has developed since submission of EoIs in 2020. Some of the key points of general interest in Appendix 2 include:

• the UK team members will be working work under the ultimate direction of SITCOM, and ;

• the UK team will comprise a summit team and a remote team, and be coordinated by Graham Smith as the LSST:UK Commissioning Coordinator;

• up to ~50% of the funding available through this call has already is ear-marked for senior members of the remote team (Will Sutherland and Gavin Dalton) that SITCOM leadership has already identified as high priority UK contributors;

• the precise levels and mix of funding across the UK team are not fixed, and will be determined through the process initiated by this call for proposals.

SITCOM colleagues recently published guidance on the scope of value added community contributions to commissioning that they seek (see Appendix 3 to this call). This new guidance is much more extensive than was available when the UK call for EoI was published in 2020. We encourage colleagues to review Appendix 3 as they formulate their detailed proposals in response to this call, regardless of whether they submitted an EoI in 2020.

...

This is an opportunity to become fully integrated members of the SITCOM team, and thus to benefit from the rights and to fulfill the responsibilities of SITCOM team members. Full details of the rights and responsibilities of SITCOM team members were published in the US/Chile Announcement of Opportunity discussed below, and are included as Appendix 4 to this call, for convenience. We draw attention to the important matters relating to on-summit working, data access, publication policy, and management structure. Colleagues are strongly encouraged to read Appendix 4 before submitted submitting their proposal and confirm in their proposal that are willing . Formal confirmation that individuals agree to comply with the responsibilities when submitting their proposalthese rights and responsibilities is expected to take place when the Memorandum of Understanding of UK contributions to commissioning is signed.

4. Funding

We have travel and subsistence funds already in place to support UK colleagues who visit the US and/or Chile as part of their commissioning duties, as part of LSST:UK Phase B funding. We included a further 3 staff years of funding dedicated to commissioning in the UK’s in-kind proposal. This funding should be seen in light of SITCOM’s specific request for expertise from Will Sutherland and Gavin Dalton (see above), and a general expectation from SITCOM that a typical commissioning contribution will amount to ~20-50% of an individual's research time over a ~1-2 year period. This equates to effort of ~0.2-0.5 FTE per year for a postdoctoral fellow, and much less than that for an academic on a three-legged contract. Further details on SITCOM’s expectations are available from the recent US/Chile Announcement of Opportunity discussed in the next section.

...

Proposals should be no more than 2 3 pages in length and should address the following topics under the following section headings. These headings and supporting comments are borrowed from the US/Chile AO to facilitate the joint review of the full UK proposal with SITCOM leadership in late 2021.

1. Name and contact information for the group leader.

2. Statement of interests and proposed contributions.
   Please be as specific as possible, indicating the specific area(s) from the set of example contributions listed in [Appendix 3]. Proposed contributions must correspond to one or more of the examples, or explicitly label the contribution as type “Other”. Plans to use private software that is not publicly released under an open source license must be specifically mentioned.

3. Statement of core competencies and adaptability:
   Please mention current and previous engagement with the Rubin Observatory Project and/or LSST Science Collaborations, experience with and/or contributions to the Rubin Science Pipelines, and familiarity with hardware and/or software components of the Rubin Observatory system. Please mention expertise, experience, prior work relevant to the specific intended area(s) of contribution.

4. Summary of personnel involved.
   For each individual, please include institution, career stage, FTE availability for Rubin commissioning related work in calendar years 2022 and 2023.

5. Description of any support and resources available to each individual [in the completion of] their contributions and plans (e.g., salary/stipend, travel and local accommodation).
   Note that analysis of commissioning data is expected to be done using Project computing resources.

6. Description of any additional resources that are needed to fulfill your proposed contributions.
   [LSST:UK has a total of 3 staff years of funding available from STFC to support commissioning contributions. Colleagues who are able to complete their proposed contribution to commissioning without additional funding are requested to note that in this section.]

7. Rubin is committed to providing opportunities for diverse and traditionally under represented groups.
   Please indicate how your proposed contribution will align with this commitment, for example, intent to provide training experience to early career scientists, a staffing profile that will contribute to the diversity of the Commissioning Team, and/or how an inclusive workplace culture will be implemented.

...

8. Submission process

Proposals should be submitted via this online form emailed as a pdf file to lusc_pm@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk before 5pm UT, September 15 2021. Safe receipt of each proposal will be acknowledged by email from Terry Sloan or George Beckett (LSST:UK Project Managers) following the submisison deadline.

Colleagues are welcome to email Graham Smith (gps@star.sr.bham.ac.uk) and Bob Mann (rgm@roe.ac.uk) with any questions, ideas, or concerns.

...