7 Roles, Responsibilities, and Project Pod Structure
This chapter defines who does what. It preserves the role clarity of the original manual and adds the project pod model — the structure that lets a large, hybrid portfolio run without overloading any one person.
7.1 General expectations for every member
Regardless of role, every RIPLRT member is expected to:
- Maintain curiosity and care for the science and projects they’re involved in.
- Be efficient without rushing — plan before doing, and troubleshoot ahead of time.
- Learn from mistakes and own them quickly. Mistakes are correctable; hiding them is not.
- Ask for help — pride is fine, too much pride is costly.
- Keep up with science relevant to our mission.
- Practice time management and meet commitments, communicating early when they can’t.
- Maintain a respectful, professional atmosphere and use emotional intelligence in conflict.
- Work honestly: never plagiarize, fabricate, or falsify. A negative result is still a result. (Re-analyzing publicly available datasets is not plagiarism — it is good open science.)
- Keep availability current so work can be planned realistically.
7.2 Standing roles
7.2.1 Principal Investigator (PI)
Dr. Félix E. Rivera-Mariani sets scientific direction and models the group’s values. The PI:
- Is the foundation and example for the group.
- Mentors members across science, learning, professional, and career dimensions.
- Provides timely feedback across all scientific aspects.
- Finds and applies for funding and identifies collaborations.
- Has members’ backs when they’ve followed the manual, and strives to be impartial.
- Chairs meetings unless delegated.
- Holds final accountability for integrity, authorship, and data governance.
7.2.2 Group Lead / Lab Coordinator
Assists the PI in running the group: coordinating meetings and agendas, overseeing onboarding/offboarding, maintaining shared infrastructure, helping route tasks, and mentoring members. (This role generalizes the former “Lab Manager,” reframed for a hybrid group where the work is data and projects more than benches and reagents.)
7.2.3 Research Assistants / Senior Mentees
Carry out core analysis and writing, mentor more junior members, generate research questions, and help maintain reproducibility standards. Often serve as project leads (below).
7.2.4 Graduate Students
Drive projects, learn methods quickly, mentor undergraduates, generate questions, and pursue professional development they identify themselves as well as opportunities the PI surfaces. Graduate members who complete their degrees may continue with us as Graduate Research Alumni Fellows (below).
7.2.5 Undergraduate Students / Interns / Trainees
Learn skills and procedures, contribute to defined project tasks, and pursue professional development. Every trainee is mentored and mapped to a real deliverable. Trainees who complete their time with us may continue as Research Alumni Fellows (below).
7.2.6 Alumni Fellows and Continuing Collaborators
Completing your time as a trainee does not mean leaving the group. These roles keep alumni connected as continuing contributors and mentors, and they are the living evidence of our through-line’s final stage — Inclusive Workforce Development. Fellow status is recorded in the member directory and confirmed at annual review (Chapter 21), so it is always clear who is an active affiliate. Because most fellows are no longer at Lynn University, or affiliated institutions, they are typically mentored and contribute directly to RIPLRT, governed by their current home institution (Section 2.2); their authorship is decided under the same contribution standards as everyone else (Ch. 14), and any data access follows the per-project IRB and data-use terms (Chapter 12).
7.2.6.1 Research Alumni Fellows
Former undergraduate trainees (and comparable early-career alumni) who remain affiliated after completing their time with the group. They continue to contribute to manuscripts and projects they helped build, mentor current trainees, and represent the group as they move into graduate study or careers. Typically part-time or remote.
7.2.6.2 Graduate Research Alumni Fellows
Graduate alumni who continue collaborating after completing their M.S. degrees. They co-author, advise on methods, help train newer members, and often bridge the group to their new institutions and networks.
7.2.6.3 Postdoctoral Collaborating Mentees and Fellows
Postdoctoral-level collaborators, recently earning their PhD degrees, receive mentorship — career growth and the path to independence — and provide senior expertise to projects and to junior members. They frequently serve as project leads and co-mentors.
7.2.7 Mentors and Mentees
Mentoring is woven through every role (Chapter 8). Mentors are the first line of support for ensuring mentees understand and follow this manual. Alumni fellows are explicitly part of this fabric: they are mentored as they continue to grow, and they mentor those coming up behind them.
7.2.8 Faculty Collaborators
Peer faculty and senior scientists — at Lynn University, the University of Puerto Rico, and other partner institutions — who collaborate on the group’s research as co-investigators, co-PIs, or co-mentors. They contribute scientific direction, domain expertise, data or field sites, and shared mentorship of trainees, and they co-author under the same contribution standards as everyone else (Ch. 14). Collaborators remain governed by their own institutions; where a collaboration involves shared data, human subjects, or funding, the governing IRB, data-use agreement, and entity are confirmed per project (Section 2.2, Chapter 12). Faculty collaborators are partners in the work, not part of the group’s internal reporting line — the role is peer-to-peer.
This manual replaces the old wage-tier role mechanics (waged/non-waged status changes tied to task completion or precision thresholds) with professional accountability handled through documentation, feedback, and — where applicable — institutional or contractual performance processes (Chapter 18). Compensation and employment terms are governed by the relevant institution or entity, not by this manual.
7.3 The project pod model
A portfolio this size cannot run on one-on-one PI mentoring alone. We organize work into pods: small, project-specific teams with defined roles. Pods distribute leadership, build mentee independence, and protect the PI’s strategic bandwidth — this is training leadership, not distancing from students.
Each pod is chartered using the Project Pod Charter template before work begins.
7.3.1 Pod roles
Each pod has a project lead who coordinates the work and serves as the first line of mentorship for more junior members. The project lead is often a senior mentee or postdoctoral fellow, but it can be anyone with the bandwidth and skills to coordinate the work and mentor others. The PI provides scientific oversight and steps in on key decisions (design, authorship, submission) but does not manage day-to-day tasks.
A typical pod assigns these roles (one person may hold more than one; junior members co-hold roles to learn them):
| Role | Owns |
|---|---|
| PI | Scientific direction, funding, final integrity/authorship accountability |
| Project Lead | Day-to-day coordination, timeline, the pod charter, weekly task structure |
| Data Steward | Data access, data-use agreement compliance, variable dictionary, secure storage |
| Analysis Lead | Statistical/ML analysis plan, code, reproducibility of results |
| Writing Lead | Manuscript/abstract drafting and submission coordination |
| Visualization / Dashboard Lead | Figures, dashboards, decision-support prototypes |
| Reproducibility Lead | Repo structure, environment, analysis checklist, render integrity |
| Science Communication Lead | Community briefs, bilingual materials, social/science-comm content |
| Trainee Contributors | Defined, mentored tasks that ladder up to a named deliverable |
7.3.2 Tiered mentoring within pods
Pods use a senior mentee / project lead → junior mentees → PI oversight structure. The project lead supports junior members day to day; the PI provides scientific oversight and steps in on key decisions (design, authorship, submission). This tiered structure is how we scale mentoring sustainably.
7.3.3 One rule that keeps us healthy
The group’s risk is not too few people — it is overextension. Every new mentee must map to a project, a specific deliverable, and a defined supervision pathway before they join a pod. Growth is intentional, aligned with mentoring bandwidth, not maximal.
7.4 Project operating manuals
Each major project (e.g., PR respiratory risk, MESA, AsthmaNet, Framingham/ARIC, All of Us, biomarker projects) maintains a short project operating manual — effectively the completed pod charter plus a two-page operational summary: aims, datasets, access rules, variable dictionary, deliverables, authorship plan, and weekly task structure. These reduce cognitive load and let mentees work more independently.