This page contains formal write ups of the policies and procedures used throughout the SIMCODES program and applies to all activities whether they are online or offline.
Table of Contents
Code of Conduct
SIMCODES is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, color, creed, disability, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, protected U.S. veteran status, or other protected class. We do not tolerate harassment of summer school participants, staff, or faculty in any form. Any participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the REU program at the discretion of the organizers. We expect participants to follow these rules at all SIMCODES talks/research/activities and event-related social activities. SIMCODES is also bound by Iowa State University policies on discrimination and harassment. All participants are expected to follow these policies for conduct and reporting of violations of the code of conduct.
Dress Code
SIMCODES has no formal dress code. Ames can get quite warm in the summer and many of the students in research groups opt to wear shorts and t-shirts. Most faculty will usually dress in business casual attire, but plenty also opt for shorts and t-shirts too. Historically, many students dress up somewhat for the final presentation (typically not business formal though). Dressing up for the final presentation is NOT required.
Mentor Selection
In the interest of transparency guidelines for the mentor/mentee-pairing of the SIMCODES REU are documented here.
For these first several steps, once a mentor and mentee have been matched they are removed from further consideration. This ensures that all potential mentors have the opportunity to match with at least one mentee before doubling (or tripling) up. In order of priority the first set of matches are made by:
- Mutual top choice matches (i.e., both mentor and student rank each other as their top-choice).
- Mutual match where mentor places the student as their first choice and the student places the mentor as their second or third choice.
- Mutual matches where mentor places the student as their second choice and the student ranks the mentor as their first, second, or third choice.
- Mutual matches where mentor places the student as their third choice and the student ranks the mentor as their first, second, or third choice.
- Mentor’s choice (assuming student agrees; if student does not agree then mentor picks again).
At this point each mentor has been given the chance to select the student they want. If a mentor still has no student they are removed from consideration. Each remaining mentor may then take one additional student by repeating steps 2 through 5. Mentors without two students at the end of this iteration are removed from the further consideration. The process then repeats with each remaining mentor being allowed to take a third student, again following steps 2 through 5. Should more students remain the process can continue iteratively.
It is important to note that this is a guideline and not strictly adhered to. In practice every application and project is somewhat unique, and the uniqueness of the application/project often warrant special considerations that do not neatly fall into the above policy.
Ultimately the goal of the SIMCODES REU is to ensure students have an enlightening and productive (and hopefully fun) experience!!!
Application Review Policy
Review Committee
The committee consists of the Principal Investigator (PI), the Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI), and three mentors (including two from computer science). This group will review applications and decide which students to admit
Evaluation Rubric
- Research Readiness
- STEM education
- Prior experience
- Coding skills
- Not heavily weighted to include early career
- Access to Potential Research at Home Institution:
- Less access rates higher
- Potential to Learn/Work with Others
- Based on reference letters and transcripts
- Interest in SIMCODES
Application Review Process
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Initial Review
- Applications are initially reviewed by at least two committee members.
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Discussion Phase
- Each reviewer applies the rubric to all applications and independently selects their top 30 candidates based on their scores.
- During the discussion, consider the following factors:
- Distribution of gender
- Nature of the home institution
- Ethnicity
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Final Selection
- Merge the individual top 30 lists from all reviewers into a combined pool.
- Select the final 30 candidates from this pool based on the highest overall scores.
- Narrow down the top 30 to the top 10 candidates.
- The remaining 20 applications will be kept as backup.
Initial Targets
-
Institutional Representation
- Over 75% of selected students should be from outside ISU.
- At least 50% should come from institutions with limited research programs.
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Residency Requirements
- Applicants must be U.S. citizens, nationals, or permanent residents.
Grievance Policy
The SIMCODES REU program at ISU is committed to a respectful and professional environment. This policy provides a clear process for addressing concerns related to misconduct, discrimination, academic disputes, or program-related issues.
Grievance Process
- Informal Resolution – Participants should first attempt to resolve concerns directly or consult your mentor.
- Formal Grievance Submission – If unresolved, submit a written grievance to the Grievance Officer, including details of the issue, involved parties, and any supporting evidence.
- Review & Investigation – The Grievance Officer will review the complaint confidentially and provide a resolution within 10 business days.
- Appeal Process – If dissatisfied, submit an appeal to the Program Investigator within 7 days for further review. A final decision will be issued within 15 days.
All grievances will be handled confidentially, and retaliation against complainants is strictly prohibited.
Contact:
Grievance Officer (Co-PI) - Dr. Ryan Richard – rrichard@iastate.edu
Program Investigator (PI)- Dr. Theresa Windus - twindus@iastate.edu
Data Policies
This is an abridged format of the Data Management Plan.
Products of Research
Data created by the SIMCODES project is categorized as one of the following:
- Training materials. This including slide presentations, code templates, code examples, and video recordings of boot camp tutorials.
- Numerical data. Project-specific. Examples include output logs from software packages, databases of numerical results, molecular dynamics simulations, model training data from machine learning efforts, and data obtained from analyzing primary data.
- Software. This includes new software units (e.g., libraries or modules), data analysis scripts, and machine learning pipelines
- Software contributions. Software development activities, e.g., bug fixes, performance improvements, and potentially new features. Target is existing software packages.
- Poster. Students will create a poster at the end of the program to showcase their work.
- Website. The source code for the SIMCODES website.
Access to Data
SIMCODES@ISU is a public GitHub organization with content licensed under the open source Apache 2.0 License. Software and numerical results created as part of the SIMCODES center will be made publicly available through the SIMCODES organization. Each mentor will be expected to create and maintain repositories, which belong to the SIMCODES organization, for each project which results in software and numerical results. At the discretion of the mentor, the public release of a project repository may be embargoed until after the results are published. Each mentor will be responsible for deciding on their repository’s license and contribution guidelines, but will be encouraged to adopt the same or similar policies as the overall organization. As appropriate we will use the MolSSI DOI generation capabilities to provide DOIs for numerical results.
Software contributions will be made subject to the licensing, contributing, and distribution guidelines of the target software package. Contributions will only be made to software packages which can guarantee that the contributions will eventually be publicly accessible.
Policies for Reuse, Redistribution, and Production of Derivatives
Training materials, posters, and the website will be released under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License which does not restrict how licensed content can be reused, redistributed, or incorporated into derived works, so long as the original authors are credited. Policies for software and numerical results will be defined per project repository. Generally speaking we expect such repositories to be released under the Apache 2.0 License, or another similar license, but realize that their may be extraneous circumstances. Software contributions will be released under the terms of the software project to which the contributions are made.
Archiving of Data
With the exception of some software contributions, all research products will be uploaded to the SIMCODES@ISU GitHub organization. At present GitHub maintains backups of organizations and repositories indefinitely and we will rely on GitHub for backing up all research.