The Administration Core supports GM/CA@APS activities to operate and continually improve a resource for macromolecular crystallography of challenging biomedical problems at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The Administrative Core is led by GM/CA Group Leader Robert Fischetti (contact PI) who supervises seven of the GM/CA staff. Scientific Director Dr. Janet Smith (University of Michigan, PI) keeps GM/CA abreast of current needs and challenges in structural biology and travels to Argonne twice per month. Dr. Craig Ogata (Operations Section Lead) leads the user program and supervises three staff. Dr. Sergey Stepanov (Controls Section Lead) leads the computing and networking effort and supervises three staff. Fischetti and Smith make major decisions about the operation and improvement of GM/CA and, in consultation with Ogata and Stepanov, set long-term goals for GM/CA. The administrative structure to operate a successful user program includes systems to receive, track and prioritize requests for advance-scheduled and rapid-access beam time, to schedule beam time, to provide an expert host for each user group, to receive feedback from users following their beam time, to gather metrics on beam time use, to track user productivity in terms of publications and structural data deposited in the PDB, and to organize beamline maintenance and improvement. Kristin Ahrens maintains databases of users, beam time use, user publications, PDB depositions and user funding, and she provides expert administrative support for all GM/CA activities. Dr. Michael Becker, together with Ogata and Smith, oversees GM/CA prioritization of beam time applications, and organizes publicity of significant user results. Ahrens, Becker and Ogata together schedule beam time. Steve Corcoran organizes routine beamline maintenance and care of user samples. Fischetti and Smith seek advice from a GM/CA External Advisory Board and are responsible for meeting GM/CA reporting requirements.
