How is HALO organized?
The scientific use of HALO, both strategically and operationally, is governed by the HALO consortium, currently consisting of five German research centers and the DFG representing the German universities. The stand-by costs of HALO are completely funded by the consortium members, in different shares. Costs for flying scientific missions with HALO are usually covered by the actual partners participating in the missions. DLR is responsible for the operation of HALO.
The following sections intend to give a brief overview on the main entities taking part in the governance of HALO and their present members.
The HALO consortium
The HALO consortium partners are the main scientific users of the aircraft and have a privileged claim to the use of the aircraft.
Present members of the HALO consortium are:
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft e.V. (DFG)
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. (MPG)
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH (FZJ)
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Leibniz Institut für Troposphärenforschung (TROPOS)
Governing structure
A scheme of the HALO governing structure is shown below. The Kuratorium (supervisory board) is the highest body with members from every partner in the HALO consortium. The Kuratorium appoints the members of the Finanzausschuss (finance committee). The WLA (Wissenschaftlicher Lenkungsausschuss, scientific steering committee) coordinates the joint research activities of the consortium partners and decides about the scheduling of HALO. DLR is the operator (Betreiber) of HALO. Coordination between the operator, the WLA and the scientific user groups is supported by two coordinators: the operator coordinator (Betreiberkoordinator) and the user coordinator (Nutzerkoordinator). The scientific missions using HALO consist of varying partners. For each mission a mission principal investigator (mission-PI) is the responsible person representing the mission and its partners, in particular against the HALO operator and the WLA.
More details on the roles of the individual bodies within the HALO world and the names of the current members of theses bodies can be found on the site sections below: