Overall management strategy: Responsibility for OncoEng is held by the Principal Investigator, Prof Richard M Hall, who has a wealth of experience accrued in research leadership from leading a number of multi-disciplinary, multi-centre grants. Prof Rebecca Shipley is the Deputy, who brings significant experience of engagement with the wider community and quick-response high-impact activities. The partners have entered into a Collaboration Agreement outlining their roles and responsibilities. The overall management strategy will be underpinned by the commitments to the OncoEng Research Challenges along with a series of plans;
Day-to-day management strategy: The day to day management structure will be undertaken by the Project Office (PO), comprising the Richard M Hall, Rebecca Shipley, Robert Hewson Knowledge Exchange Person (Leeds), Alice Hardy (Communications officer – UCL) & Project Support Officer. The PO members will meet fortnightly formally. The office will support activities laid out in the 4 plans outlined above including, training and dissemination activities, stakeholder engagement, summer schools, conferences, meeting arrangements, accruing/collating performance data to track progress so as to inform decision making at the MBd as well providing timely communication. Additional administrative support, particularly around finance and HR will be provided by Research and Innovation (R&I) and HR units at the 3 Host Universities.
Management Board (MBd) led by the Prof Hall. This Group will meet monthly is the ultimate decision-making body and will comprise the Hall, RC leads, members of the PO and two PDRA reps. The responsibility of the MBd will be to:
Individual Research Challenge areas, made up of Investigators, PDRAs, technical staff and PhD students, will meet monthly (either face-to-face or via videoconferencing) to discuss progress and prepare reports, including performance criteria, for the MBd and to communicate key developments or issues to the wider team/community (agendas and minutes). WP teams will act on feedback from the MBd.
Advisory Board (AB) having a key role in providing oversight and an independent perspective of the activities within BioTrib. The AB, initially chaired by Prof. Cathy Holt; Cardiff University, comprises 5 leading international academics, 2 industrialists and 1 surgeon (Haden), two patients and an EPSRC representative together with RMH (PI), RS (Deputy) and RWH (Imperial). Chair will be rotated annually to reflect the needs of the PG. The AB will meet on-line on a six monthly basis with 3 face to face meetings at kick-off, major review at M30 and the final workshop. The AB will review overall progress and will advise on strategy, the direction of research and the way it is conducted. It will provide key advice on major changes to the programme particularly of funding and personnel at year 2.5 for years 4 and 5.