Jun 17, 2020 Advisory Board Meeting

The [Open Force Field Consortium Advisory Board] met on June 17, 2020. The minutes are summarized as follows:

Change in OpenFF leadership

• Lee-Ping Wang announced that he will step down from the leadership role in OpenFF on July 15, 2020. This decision is primarily driven by a desire to spend more time on research and exploration of new scientific decision and to reduce his involvement in the management duties of the Initiative. Lee-Ping will remain an active member of the Initiative in the co-investigator role.

RCA and Bylaws

• Certain modifications of the Research Collaboration Agreement and Bylaws have been suggested. The main change in the RCA refers to inclusion of prorated membership option for new members joining later in the Consortium funding year (starting in October).
• Searching for a mechanism that would allow the Consortium to update these agreements outside of the renewal cycles.
• Elections for the Advisory and Governing Board functions will take place every 12 months instead of every 6 months, which is the current election period.

Renewals

• Most of the partners are supportive of funding the OpenFF Consortium in Year 3, pending approval.

Independent organization

• OpenFF is considering the formation of an independent entity around the effort to ensure longer term sustainability of the project. Different options are being explored to find the best organizational structure to support the mission driven by open science, open source and open data principles.