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Working Group Team Roles

Every ESIIL Working Group identifies three leadership roles that receive additional training and interact directly with ESIIL. These roles help the group coordinate technical work, collaboration practice, and long-term transition of outputs.

Role Overview

Role Primary Connection to ESIIL Focus
Tech Lead ESIIL Cyberinfrastructure team Infrastructure, reproducibility, repositories, workflows, and technical support
Collaboration Lead ESIIL facilitators Team science, healthy collaboration, inclusive participation, and meeting process
Transition Lead ESIIL training and communication support Intellectual property discussions, authorship expectations, communication products, and long-term impact

These roles do not replace the Project Leader or Co-Leaders. They make sure key parts of the working group have clear points of contact and can receive focused ESIIL support.

Tech Lead

The Tech Lead becomes the interface between the Working Group and the ESIIL Cyberinfrastructure team.

Responsibilities include:

  • serving as the primary technical contact with ESIIL CI
  • coordinating computational infrastructure
  • coordinating GitHub repositories
  • coordinating containers
  • coordinating workflows
  • coordinating software
  • coordinating cloud computing needs
  • supporting reproducibility
  • requesting technical support from ESIIL
  • participating in additional technical training

The Tech Lead should be involved early when the group is identifying datasets, analytical tools, software environments, repositories, or long-term maintenance needs.

Collaboration Lead

The Collaboration Lead works closely with ESIIL facilitators to improve team effectiveness.

Responsibilities include:

  • promoting healthy collaboration
  • facilitating team science
  • helping establish team norms
  • supporting inclusive participation
  • assisting with conflict resolution when needed
  • helping organize meetings
  • participating in additional team science training provided by ESIIL

The Collaboration Lead should be involved early when the group is setting its meeting cadence, team norms, decision-making process, and participation expectations.

Transition Lead

The Transition Lead helps move the Working Group's outputs beyond the project itself.

Responsibilities include:

  • coordinating intellectual property discussions
  • helping document authorship expectations
  • managing transition planning
  • supporting open science
  • coordinating communication products
  • supporting science communication
  • helping maximize long-term impact of the Working Group
  • participating in additional ESIIL training related to IP, communication, and research transition

The Transition Lead should be involved early when the group is discussing authorship, public summaries, deliverables, communication products, open science expectations, and closeout planning.

When to Name Roles

Working groups should name these roles during startup and revisit them when participation changes. The sample RFP asks groups to identify a technical lead, collaboration lead, and translation or transition-oriented lead as part of the participant information.

Role names and responsibilities

Use this page as the canonical description of the three Working Group leadership roles. Other guide pages should link here instead of repeating the full role descriptions.

See Also