PAY Meeting 2026-03-21

Update on the next couple weeks:

March 28th: Lab clean up, AGM, social
April: no team-wide meetings / subsystem meetings unless announced.
(SS-PAY may have a couple meetings to iron out partnerships for CUBICS)
May 2nd: first meeting back, slow start. Discuss calendar for Summer 2026
May 9th: starting back, full speed ahead -> subsystems kick of meeting for projects and work allocation

Availability of Leads and Senior Members for Summer 2026 (and succession plans, as applicable)

Science (Ege)	Ege (lead): “fully available for UTAT work” at current capacity throughout Summer 2026, transitioning out and onboarding new lead in Summer 2026. Fall 2026 – light work low time availability wrap things up if anything remains; After 2027 not available unless emergencies.
	•Zoe: available online (in person for emergencies), same capacity for work as in the last semester(s) until June 2027
•Noam: same capacity for work throughout until June 2027
•Sherry, Michael, Andrew, Aryan: same capacity for work (online) until end of 2026.
Optics (Ilya)	Same (if not slightly larger) capacity for work throughout Summer 2026 and onwards until at least June 2027. I will be “remote” and joining in person every 2-ish weeks.
	•Kenya: Same capacity for work until June 2027
Opto-Mech (San)
	•Marfa: available online Summer 2026, Fall 2026 – same contribution as before.
•Tristen: available online Summer 2026, 3-5 hours / week.
•Alan: available online Summer 2026, 3-5 hours / week. •Dani: available online Summer 2026, 3-5 hours / week.
Pay-Elec (Coby)	Offboarding ASAP b/c moving for grad school to USA. Throughout Summer will be busy with LUVCam project. Will still be available online occasionally and to onboard the next lead.
	•Alex Li: available online Summer 2026, same commitment as before.
• Alwyn: leaving soon.
• Laurence Ding: very good, but more suited for BUS.
Data Processing (Nooh)	Offboarding ASAP. Starting Summer 2026 becoming general member; same capacity for work as now but no longer responsible for onboarding & administrivia. Ready to start interviewing. Will stay for as long as needed. Wants to maintain ML research, new lead can decide future efforts.
	• Kevin: Summer 2026 not sure what capacity for contribution, able to join meetings remote.
Firmware (Alex)	Available in Summer 2026, onboard lead in Summer 2026. Beginning Fall 2026 will not be available.
	•Igor: available online Summer 2026, same contribution as before. Set up remote desktop environment.
Chief Payload Engineer	Fulfills Systems Engineering and Project Management responsibilities simultaneously, until one more person can be hired to take over the other “half”.
Mission Research Team	Ege, Aryan, need to designated Ambassadors from each subsystem
· Expectation for Ambassadors to join weekly meeting to makes rule discussion is realistic from an engineering point of view.
· Will assemble the mission research team within 1-2 weeks.

New Lead Hiring:

Pay-Elec: interviewing and onboarding ASAP, Boris can take over temporarily.
Data Processing (Nooh): “offboard ASAP”. Start interviewing form now, reminder after exams end, interview in May (hopefully – contingent on interest in position). Nooh available “as long as needed until end of July 2026” – that’s deadline for new lead hired & onboarded.
Firmware (Alex): won’t intake many general members, release form for hiring now / interview in May.
Science (Ege): anticipate a lot of change to subsystem structure e& operations (wrap up FINCH & prospect for new mission). First half of summer find & hire new lead (by July 1), second half of summer onboarding new lead.

Expectation on Meeting Attendance: suggested in my capacity as Interim Chief Payload Engineer (not-yet-binding) and making use of your hours most efficiently…

Lead Meeting: leads must attend as per leads commitment “contract”
PAY General meeting: leads and senior members are expected to show up.
- Senior members are those who have significant project responsibilities.
- “General” members are encouraged to show up.
Goal: to ensure>50% of attendees are relevant / required for a meeting.
Proposal: once-every-two-weeks meetings basis.
- Week 2n-1: administrative updates
- Week 2n: technical updates between subsystems.
- As many individual / focused meetings throughout the week(s) as needed
- Once per month basis: each subsystem produces a written summary of what’s been done .
- Weekly basis: subsystem slack channel message thread to update on personal updates, particularly for general members

New mission research team:

Within themselves will meet frequently (like a subsystem)