Last week, our co-spokesperson Heiko Weber gave a plenary talk titled "Experimental Research Data in Materials Science and Solid-State Physics: Challenges, Strategies and Solutions" at the 8th Asian Materials Data Symposium (AMDS2024) in China.
In his talk, Heiko introduced the FAIRmat project and showed how NOMAD facilitates the management of experimental research data. The talk was attended by 1000 attendees in person and 4000 online!

We are thrilled to share our vision for advancing FAIR research data management and continuing to push the boundaries in our field.

The 2024 EOSC Symposium marked an important milestone in establishing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Federation. A key highlight was the launch of the first EOSC EU Node, which will serve as a model for future nodes. Notable participants included European officials and representatives from Germany's National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), who emphasized the importance of alignment and collaboration among European and national infrastructures. The event drew over 450 attendees in Berlin, demonstrating its significance in promoting open science across Europe. Claudia Draxl, the spokesperson for FAIRmat, delivered the scientific keynote address titled "FAIR, what else?" which is now available online.

On November 7, 2024, we launched the third FAIRmat podcast episode!

In this series, called Pioneers in electronic-structure theory, our FAIRmat host, Miguel Marques, talks to personalities who were instrumental in developing methods and codes that have come to be known as electronic-structure theory. This work includes pioneering density-functional theory and methods beyond to treat many-body effects in ground-state and excitations.

In the third episode, Miguel Marques interviews Risto Nieminen, a former professor of theoretical physics in Finland. In the first part of the interview, Risto Nieminen shares insights into his student life, describing his experiences studying physics from 1968 on and discussing the (social) dynamics within the scientific community then. The second part of the conversation centers on his scientific achievements in density functional theory. The interview concludes with his contributions to the scientific community, including his work with the supercomputer at the CSC, his involvement in the Psi-k network, and the Millennium Prize.

Find the podcast on YouTube or enjoy the audio-only version on Spotify now!

The FAIR-DI European Conference on Data Intelligence 2024 took place from October 27 to 30 in Karlsruhe, gathering experts to discuss significant advancements in data intelligence.

The event brought together specialists from theoretical and experimental backgrounds, focusing on research data management, related services and tools, databases, and the impact of large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence (AI) in materials science.

Several talks introduced new databases and services for research data management during the conference, covering material synthesis, artificial photosynthesis, theoretical calculations, and polymers. Although each solution was tailored to its specific field, a common principle emerged: the importance of enabling the efficient use of substantial datasets to accelerate scientific discovery. By utilizing the potential of LLMs - such as active learning and chatbots - these tools aim to predict and discover new materials and methods while supporting scientists throughout their experiments.

A central theme of the conference was the evolving field of data intelligence. While data and intelligence are interconnected, they also influence each other independently. The community is currently focused on managing existing data in both theoretical and experimental contexts using machine learning, natural language processing, and large language models. However, these methods are expected to shape future data collection practices, raising essential questions: Which data should be prioritized? How do we ensure data quality? Can we capture all relevant data? And what role will robots play in data generation and collection? These questions were actively discussed during the conference and are anticipated to drive research in the coming years.

A highlight of the conference was the FAIR-DI Award ceremony, which recognized outstanding data handling in a PhD thesis aligned with FAIR principles. This year's award was presented to Lena Pilz from KIT. She delivered an engaging presentation on her innovative use of Chemotion as an electronic lab notebook (ELN), expanding its application to metal-organic framework (MOF) synthesis and openly publishing her research data according to FAIR principles. Congratulations!

We thank all participants of the FAIR-DI European Conference on Data Intelligence 2024 for contributing to the success of this event.

On September 4-6, 2024, FAIRmat hosted its first Hackathon in Berlin focused on FAIR Data Management for Spectroscopy Simulations. José Pizarro, a member of FAIRmat's Area C: Computation, organized the sessions and delivered the content.

The Hackathon started with introductory talks covering advanced simulation methods beyond DFT, such as GW, TDDFT, BSE, DMFT, KKR, and electron-phonon coupling on the first day. The slides from these presentations are available online. Over 30 participants, mainly students from different European research institutions, engaged in hands-on coding activities related to Research Data Management (RDM) during the following two days.

The participants learned how to create and develop new parsers within the NOMAD infrastructure, as well as to use the standard NOMAD schema. Parsers are essential tools in RDM, acting as translators between files and structured (meta)data schemas. The participants were able to understand, use, and extend the standard data schema defined for simulations in NOMAD.

One of the event's highlights was one participant successfully developing a parser within a day and a half, showcasing the feasibility of setting up parsers quickly. You can find the parser for YAMBO spectroscopic simulations here. This quick progress demonstrated that transforming raw data from specific formats into the standard NOMAD schema is straightforward. During the Hackathon, it was clear that setting up parsers is less time-consuming than expected, and managing research data in a consistent and FAIR way is less cumbersome than anticipated.

An important outcome of the event was demonstrating how to establish parsers and use (meta)data schemas, with participants actively engaging in these tasks. Participants not only realized the benefits of integrating parsers into their research but also felt optimistic about the efficiency of the process and the future of their work. 

In addition to technical outcomes, the Hackathon successfully fostered a collaborative environment. Participants had the opportunity to meet each other in person and interact directly with the NOMAD developers, strengthening relationships.

Plans following the hackathon include further improving parsers in collaboration with scientists and broadening the involvement of external contributors. The development of parsers will continue as a community effort to scale up and integrate more external expertise into NOMAD.

"Hey there, it is Lisa. You may remember me from the FAIRmat Users Meeting. I am starting a new research project focused on acquiring and managing data from my experiments according to the FAIR principles. I am fascinated by these principles but need a tool to help me control my experiments and acquire FAIR data without programming from scratch."

If you can relate to Lisa´s situation, watch this week´s video campaign on LinkedIn. It introduces you to our measurement and experiment control software NOMAD CAMELS and our motivation behind its development.

NOMAD CAMELS is designed for ease of use. It allows you to translate your research ideas into measurement and process protocols within minutes. You can implement instrument communication without programming skills, increase productivity and flexibility, and produce FAIR data. And it is open-source and free.

Get NOMAD CAMELS from here.

From August 25-30, 2024, FAIRmat was present at the emc2024 in Copenhagen. The team had a booth in the "Open Science Area", managed by multiple co-workers and collaborators who are active in FAIRmat and experts in electron microscopy.

The event facilitated excellent interaction between researchers and instrument manufacturers. Both researchers and manufacturers greatly appreciated the functionality of our open-source NOMAD service. Especially in electron microscopy, the data is normally extensive, which makes data management more difficult. The scientific community wishes to process the data in the same location where it is stored, eliminating data transfer. Consequently, as a highlight, they acknowledged that NOMAD meets their specific needs since it combines data management with online data processing in one tool. We had engaging and constructive discussions around NOMAD, its implementation, and future developments.

Industry partners such as Microscopy Australia actively approached us and expressed their openness to supporting the metadata standards proposed by FAIRmat. They are aware that precise and long-lasting metadata definitions are necessary to meet the requirements of funding agencies such as DFG.

We are grateful for the fruitful interaction at our FAIRmat booth and the constructive atmosphere within the exhibition area.

In addition to the booth, our co-spokesperson Christoph Koch gave a talk titled "Introducing a FAIR research data management infrastructure for electron microscopy and other condensed matter physics and materials science data" giving an overview of our recent progress in extending NOMAD. In addition, FAIRmat was well presented with several other talks on specific scientific problems.

On August 21 and 22, 2024, we organized two workshops as part the "FAIRmat Community Meets Technology Partners Workshops" series. This time, our focus was on "Data Exchange and Storage in Ellipsometry and Raman Spectroscopy", which is of significant interest to our community.

Both workshops brought together scientific and technical experts to explore the future of data structures for optical spectroscopy methods, emphasizing ellipsometry and Raman spectroscopy. We stressed the importance of FAIR data within the scientific community and its long-term value to society. We introduced and explained the NeXus standard and discussed its current implementations for ellipsometry and Raman spectroscopy. While we gathered valuable ideas for future improvements, the feedback was positive and the current standard was widely accepted. The workshop was attended by representatives from Sentech Instruments GmbH, Park Systems, NFDI4Chem, ELI Beamlines Laser Centre and others.

Additionally, we held a detailed "how-to" session to demonstrate the essential steps for creating NeXus files using Python. Python provides easy access to NeXus as a FAIR data format, enabling lab integration for simple measurement setups. Finally, we outlined the goals and ideas for the next workshop on ellipsometry and Raman spectroscopy.

We are looking forward to the future editions of this workshop series.

Our 4th FAIRmat Users Meeting was held on June 13-14, 2024, and this time, it took place at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg instead of Berlin.

The event was full of exciting activities, including a panel discussion on the future of research data management. The panelists were Jose Marquez, Christoph Koch (HU Berlin), Heiko Weber, Erdman Spiecker (FAU), and Brit Redöhl (DFG).

Our users Ta-Shun Chou, Julia Schumann, and Antonio Delesma Diaz shared their expertise in managing data with NOMAD, covering topics like synthesis via vapor deposition, catalysis, and computation. The event also included three hands-on workshops on NOMAD, adressing both new and experienced users, and introducing our new tool, NOMAD CAMELS, for FAIR data collection.

The two highlights of our 4th Users Meeting were the interactive workshops on RDM education and the engaging "Talk to our experts" session. During the RDM workshop, we explored Michael Krieger and colleagues' teaching approach to research data management. Two students who took this course last semester provided valuable insights and critical feedback. During the "Talk to our experts" sessions, users had the opportunity to chat casually with our developers about NOMAD, ask questions, and discuss future developments.

We introduced our new comic characters, Lisa, Thomas, and Henry, who represent our users and partners. These characters will soon feature in our social media content and at conferences. Looking ahead, we are excited to further develop these characters through storytelling to enhance community building and refine the FAIRmat communication strategy. This will enable us to better engage with our audience and address the needs of the research community regarding FAIR data.

Recordings of FAIRmat Tutorial 14 are now available on the FAIRmat and NOMAD YouTube channel! The full playlist includes:

• Working with the NOMAD-Simulations schema plugin
• Developing schemas and parsers for FAIR computational data storage
• Extending NOMAD-Simulations to support custom methods and outputs
• Interfacing complex simulation and analysis workflows with NOMAD

Read more about the FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series here. You find all the learning material for Tutorial 14 on GitHub.