Responsibilities Description: Simulation Leader

General

The STAR Simulation Leader is responsible for maintaining, developing and expanding the STAR simulation framework. His role is to analyze, design, formulate, implement and maintain the consistency of the simulation software(s), packages and toolkits solution to support the STAR research needs and/or in response to problems in support of the scientific program. A list of areas under the Simulation's leader responsibilities are:

• GEANT (or any other detector description and simulation toolkit), geometry and physics process modeling (i.e. describing the passage of elementary particles through the matter)
• Any related data structure handling
• Simulation framework response simulator including user API, framework, ...
• Event generators (in conjunction with the Event Generator Coordinator)
• ...

The domain of development of Detector specific microscopic (slow) and parametrized (fast) response simulator will be done through discussions and advanced planning at Software & Computing meetings in conjunction with the Reconstruction and Database Leaders, affected sub-system detector coordinators and experts. The same applies with the cross-discipline (Simulation/Reconstruction) area known in STAR as embedding.

Specifics (current as per 2003) and future

Within the current STAR simulation framework, the Simulation Leader is expected to attend to the development, test and maintenance of the existing geometry and materials database and related GEANT simulation software necessary to simulate the response of the STAR Detector used to interpret, without discontinuities, ongoing and forthcoming research data from the STAR Experiment at RHIC. He/she will be expected to

• coordinate with the site's production coordinators the usage of computing farms at several institutes for Monte-Carlo production
• respond to requests of the physics-working-groups
• provide guidance and expertise to the sub-system software coordinator's designated expert when comes to the modeling of their detector sub-system geometry description
• communicate with scientists and engineers to determine / solve / implement solutions to/to their problems
• plan and prepare the production and transmission of the STAR simulation data
• participate in the experiments physics program.

However, the STAR experiment and collaboration being a leaving body with evolving needs, the true meaning/ primary role and responsibility of this position is to ensure timely development of the software capability necessary to produce and interpret STAR research data and respond to the program's medium to long-term needs. To achieve this mission, the Simulation Leader must

• Stay current with the state of the art technology, survey the research literature, evaluate existing methodologies
• Follow the development of models, tools, toolkit for the simulation of geometry/material/detector response and modeling relevant to STAR Collaboration effort and determine feasibility of approach, develop and integrate new solutions within the STAR Simulation Software framework when applicable
• At every step, provide and maintain up to date documentation and offer support to users and developers of the STAR simulation softwares
• Obtain user feedback, diagnose problems and make software or documentation modifications as necessary.

Authorities

• Manage assigned resources as see fit to complete research goals on time and at appropriate standards
• To achieve objectives, he/she has the authority to directly organize highly prioritized productions within the alloted resources
• The STAR Simulation Leader is the ultimate point of contact and organizer of the STAR Simulation framework and software and therefore, any STAR simulation work and activities should be clearly stated and indicated to the Simulation Leader.
• Any Simulation Work should have his/her final approval before an integration in the STAR framework.

Responsibilities

He/she is responsible for identifying key milestones, determine immediate and future needs and communicate critical project issues in a timely fashion.
He/she is expected to be a central point of contact for the user's need within the area of expertise, respond to user problems, explain technology and methodologies and guide or mentor individuals as appropriate.

Skills

He/she is expected to demonstrate in depth understanding of fundamentals of the requirement specification, design, coding, and testing of technologies, methodologies and computational techniques related to the simulation needs of the STAR experiment. He/she should act as an architect for the future needs and therefore, have a good understanding of the current and future application and technology and the faculty to learn, apply and implement new and emerging techniques and concepts very quickly. The simulation leader would have a PhD in physics and several years of post-doctoral experience in the field of Heavy Ion, strong background in programming, using C++, FORTRAN, and GEANT3 and/or GEANT4, and good communicational skills.

Written by Jerome Lauret, S&C Leader 2003