CERP Innovation Challenge 2025

People Lifecycle
Portal

A unified administrative platform for managing every stage of the CERP research personnel lifecycle — from first-day onboarding to alumni engagement — built for the people who keep research running.

Open Live Portal → See how it works ↓
241
Active Members
292
Alumni Records
11
Faculty PIs
5
Lifecycle Stages
Personnel Flow

The complete research
personnel lifecycle

From first contact to lasting alumni network — every stage tracked, every handoff documented, every admin task visible in one place.

New Joinee
Profile created
Info submitted
Entry
→
Onboarding
18-task checklist
Desk · Access · Safety
CERP + KAUST tasks
→
Active Member
Research & training
Member directory
241 current
→
Exit Process
Clearance & handover
Exit summary report
Checklist + summary
→
Alumni
Searchable records
Contact · Position
292 records
Every stage is tracked with live counts, overdue detection, and actionable checklists. Admins see exactly what needs attention — no spreadsheets, no guesswork. The dashboard surfaces the one number that matters: what requires action today.
Real People. Real Data.

Not a demo. Not synthetic.
533 verified CERP records.

Every member, student, postdoc, and alumni in the portal is a real CERP person drawn from institutional records. This is the complete CERP people database — something no spreadsheet, email thread, or generic HR tool has ever surfaced in one place.

241
Active Members
Currently at CERP
292
Alumni Records
2018 — 2025
11
PI Research Groups
Faculty + affiliates
533
Total People
Verified institutional records
Member Composition — Active CERP Roster
PhD Students
Largest cohort
Postdoctoral
Fellows & researchers
Research Scientists
Senior researchers
Research Associates
& Engineers
Visiting Scholars
International visitors
MS Students
Master's candidates
Data sourced from KAUST People Search and CERP institutional records — verified and loaded as real member data, not placeholder entries.
View all 241 members →
Portal Modules

Every operation
in one place

Six core modules plus a full automation layer — covering the complete admin surface area from a live analytics dashboard to one-click broadcast email, CSV export, and printable packets.

Dashboard — operational overview
Dashboard
Live operational command center with analytics
Stat cards, Personnel Lifecycle Flow with live stage counts, and three interactive analytics charts: Role Distribution donut, Alumni Trend by Year bar chart, and Members by PI Group ranking. Active onboarding and upcoming departures tables below. All state persists across browser sessions via localStorage.
Onboarding tracker
Onboarding
18-task checklist with email actions & print
CERP Admin and KAUST HR task sections with per-task toggles and progress bars. One-click Send Welcome Email and Notify Supervisor buttons pre-fill personalized drafts. Print Packet generates a clean onboarding document ready to save as PDF. All progress saved automatically.
Offboarding tracker
Offboarding
Exit checklist with email actions & summary
Live clearance checklist with overdue detection and a dynamic exit summary auto-derived from task categories. Send Exit Notice to the departing member or Notify CEC with one click — both pre-filled with pending tasks. Print Exit Packet generates a printable clearance document instantly.
Current Members — 241 active
Members
241 verified active members
Searchable, filterable table with formatted role titles, PI group attribution, and department. Email addresses are live mailto: links — click to compose instantly. Export CSV downloads the current filtered view as a date-stamped spreadsheet.
People & Directory
Directory
Directory with Group Communications
Four-tab directory: faculty cards, admin staff, research staff, and all members. Group Communications card lets admins broadcast to any category — PIs, Platform Staff, Research Staff, Students, or Everyone — with live recipient counts and one-click copy to clipboard.
Alumni Database — 292 records
Alumni
292 alumni records since 2018
Searchable, filterable alumni database with departure year, PI group, current position, and LinkedIn links. Export CSV downloads all 292 records (or the filtered subset) as a date-stamped file — institutional memory as a spreadsheet in one click.
Innovation Challenge

Evaluation criteria alignment

How the portal addresses each of the four judging dimensions.

40%
Functionality
  • Full lifecycle management (5 stages)
  • Dual-track onboarding & offboarding checklists
  • One-click email templates for every stage
  • Group broadcast email to 5 personnel categories
  • CSV export for members & alumni
  • Printable onboarding & exit packets
  • Analytics charts: roles, alumni trend, PI groups
  • localStorage persistence — survives page refresh
20%
Usability
  • Dashboard surfaces what needs attention first
  • Single-page app — zero page reloads
  • Sidebar nav with live badge counts
  • Email actions inline with each case — no context switch
  • Inline Admin Guide with full instructions
  • Search on all data-heavy views
  • Copy-to-clipboard with confirmation feedback
20%
Maintainability
  • Single-file deployment — no build step
  • No external dependencies (CDN only)
  • Data arrays easily editable by admins
  • localStorage versioned keys prevent stale data
  • Checklist templates for consistent task generation
  • Reset to defaults in one click for clean demos
20%
Innovation
  • Personnel Lifecycle Flow visual with live counts
  • Group Communications — broadcast to any category
  • Analytics charts derived live from real data
  • Unified lifecycle view replacing 5 separate tools
  • Real CERP member data — not synthetic demo data
  • Full automation layer with zero backend required
Technical Design

Architecture overview

Intentionally simple — one HTML file, zero build tooling, deployable anywhere. The constraint is a feature, not a limitation.

vanilla JS no framework
Tailwind CSS via CDN
Chart.js 4.4 analytics charts
localStorage persistent state
mailto: protocol email automation
single HTML file index.html
GitHub Pages free static hosting
real CERP data embedded JSON
View full system architecture diagram →