Description of the Management Structure
Management plan
This is a complex project with several interdependencies, and therefore it is necessary a monitoring and control structure capable of dealing with such a diverse team from different backgrounds. It is envisaged a project meeting at the beginning of the project where it will be communicated to each member a detailed calendar and tasks. On the end of each year it is further predicted project meetings with all the team members involved. A web site will be put on that will enable all members within the team to exchange ideas, notify exceptional situations or simply ask for advice on specific subjects. The website should function in a twofold way; in the first place as a contact platform for the project members and secondly as a window to the public view where the most important results will be communicated to interested parties, in the form of technical reports, scientific articles and general links to related work. For each milestone reached in the project a full report will be elaborated by the PI and discussed in a dedicated meeting with task leaders and everyone involved in the accomplishment of the milestone. To further ensure the project stays on track, periodical meetings within each subtask will be scheduled. The respective task leader should be present in all meetings and communicate any exceptional situation to the PI. Particular care must further be taken with monitoring and advising the non PhD members. The appropriate advisor should meet at least once a week for short meetings. Progress reports will be due to be included in the project’s website Supervising board. A supervising committee will be constituted, comprising the PI, M. Amaral and MA Brito. This team will approve reports and decide on several of the project decisions. This committee will select and approve the scholarships candidates. It is also the duty of the committee to take action if some of the risks outlined below happen and propose appropriate mitigation measures if some will happen.
Foreseeable risks
There are internal and external risks that may hinder the project objectives ,. The ones that were identified as the most serious and capable of more seriously impacting the project are:
a) inability to in a timely manner to define coherently the molecular topological knowledge units within NAMS (Task 2.2) This will prompt a back up plan resorting to standard NAMS and kriging for screening or the use of an ensemble of the best QSAR models, coupled with NAMS . Due to the innovative nature of this methodology, ,
b) After tasks 3.1, the selected molecules are not easily obtained (no vendors or price prohibitive). The requested budget may have to be applied to chemical synthesis of adequate targets. Although synthesis is not envisaged in this project, we may have to resort to it if we fail to obtain the selected molecules. Due to the eventual increase in costs, less molecules may be tested in biological assays.
Milestones List
| Date | Milestone denomination | Description |
| 15-07-2016 | Benchmarks completed | The benchmarks that are to be the basis for testing the models should be completed early within the project. These are critical to the success of task 2, as the benchmarks will not only be used to assess current models performance, but the new topologically enhanced NAMS |
| 29-12-2017 | NAMS with molecular topological knowledge units is validated | This is the most important event in the project, as in reaching this milestone (at the end of Task 2) The new model was successfully implemented and validated with the selected benchmarks. By completing this objective , the new model can be tested in real world drugdevelopment scenarios (Task 3) |
| 28-12-2018 | Lead compounds selected | This is the last validation of the models devised, as finding and testing new lead molecules for future testing is the final proof that the developed methodology is able to identify the relevant characteristics that may identify any molecue as a drug for any specific objective |