The third EUDAT conference, taking place from 24-25 September, will explore key themes around data sharing and infrastructure.
Barcelona, 1 August 2014. – How will Europe ensure that the ever-increasing amounts of research data being generated are exploited to its advantage? What tools can researchers draw upon to share data and break cross-disciplinary boundaries, paving the way for new discoveries?
Bringing together three years of work on the creation of a collaborative data infrastructure, EUDAT’s third conference, to be held in Amsterdam from 24-25 September, offers an ideal opportunity to find out about the pan-European services that are supporting the data revolution. With the theme “Bringing research data infrastructures to Horizon 2020”, the conference, co-located with the Research Data Alliance’s fourth plenary meeting, will also explore overarching themes of crucial importance in the creation of a thriving data economy, such as open access, legal issues, funding models and sustainability of data infrastructures.
Speaking to International Science Grid This Week, Per Oster, Director of Research Infrastructures at the IT Center for Science (CSC) in Finland, the EUDAT project coordinator, explains: “It’s at these events that we can meet researchers and find out what their needs are. This is vital in enabling us to create services that really support researchers in the most efficient way possible.” As well as gaining essential feedback on EUDAT services, he emphasizes, the “more general discussions are also important, such as those about how we can support open science and help to increase the societal impact of research. By making the results of research discoverable and easy to access, researchers become more involved in the general debate”.
While Europeans now enjoy access to world-class computing infrastructures, thanks to initiatives such as the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI), Per notes that researchers still lack a comprehensive data infrastructure which would allow them to share raw data and research findings. Working closely with researchers, the project has created a suite of data services – the B2 family – which enables European researchers and practitioners from any research discipline to find, store, share, replicate, compute, preserve and process data, allowing them to carry out research effectively. The involvement of research communities from the early stages has led to user-friendly services which meet real-life needs.
“Essentially, we want to support the revolution in science and information that’s taking place today,” says Per. “We will continue to work closely together with research communities to build services that are suited to their needs. Our goal is to make sure that our services can be put to use by researchers the very day that they go into production.”
Conference participation is free of charge, but subject to registration via the EUDAT website.
All interested parties are invited to showcase research activities and results at the Poster Session, taking place at the networking cocktail on 24 September.