We are delighted to announce the FAIR-DI Award for Data Handling in a PhD Thesis. The FAIR-DI Award recognizes an exceptional PhD Thesis in the field of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-purposable) data.

The recipient of this award will have the opportunity to present their thesis at the FAIR-DI European Conference on Data Intelligence 2024 (Karlsruhe, Germany, 27-30 Oct 2024) and will receive a prize of €2000.

FAIRmat recently organized a highly successful satellite event of the LLM (Large Language Model) Hackathon for Applications in Materials and Chemistry at the Center for the Science of Materials Berlin (CSMB) from May 6 - 8. The event welcomed approximately 50 participants from esteemed institutions such as Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (FSU), Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. The hackathon began with an engaging introductory talk by Kevin Jablonka, followed by lively discussions.

The event served as a platform to showcase innovative applications of LLMs in materials science. Participants were deeply involved in various projects and had the opportunity to present their work, with some even taking part in the global competition. A collection of submitted projects can be found online. Notably, our colleague Bernadette Mohr was a member of the prize-winning team “LangSIM”, and their project pitch is now available online. Additionally, our co-workers Nathan Daelman and Hampus Näsström were part of teams that received the Anthropic prize. The level of achievement demonstrated in just three days during the focused hackathon left us deeply impressed and delighted.

Several co-workers from FAIRmat took part in the DPG Spring Meeting of the Condensed Matters Section at Technische Universität Berlin from March 17 to 22, 2024. Our colleagues from Area C, Theory and Computation, delivered multiple talks on the principles of FAIR data and how to use NOMAD in simulation and computational materials science. At the "Hacky Hour" event, focused on practical tools for daily scientific work, the newest member of the NOMAD family, NOMAD CAMELS, was introduced, offering a powerful new tool for research. Like last year, we represented our affiliated consortium, DAPHNE4NFDI, at the exhibition area with an information booth about research data management and NOMAD. The FAIRmat contributions were complemented by a tutorial on "FAIR research data - generation, handling, and analysis within the FAIRmat infrastructure."

On May 27-28, 2024, the 1st FAIRmat workshop on data exchange and storage in optical spectroscopy took place in Berlin and online. A report and the slides can be viewed here.

Our spokesperson, Claudia Draxl, gave an invited talk in the physics colloquium at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg on April 17, 2024. She gives a perspective on how we come "From research data to data-centric research". You can find the video online now.

Recordings of FAIRmat tutorial 12 are now available on the FAIRmat and NOMAD YouTube channel! The full playlist includes:

• Introduction to NOMAD and NOMAD OASIS - Insights into technical aspects
• Hands-on Demonstration - Explore schemas, parsers, and data analysis

Read more about the FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series here.

Karlsruhe, Germany, October 27 – 30, 2024.

Building on the success of previous editions, we are pleased to announce the upcoming FAIR-DI European Conference on Data Intelligence 2024. Following the remarkable achievements and insightful discussions at the 2020 and 2022 Conferences on a FAIR Data Infrastructure for Materials Genomics, we are excited to continue the discussion and further collaboration and innovation in this growing field with the theme of Data Intelligence.

From February 12 to 14, the FAIRmat team participated in the Love Data Week 2024. The International Campaign Week was running under the theme "Your kind of data" this year.

FAIRmat contributed with a well-received social media campaign, introducing co-workers from each area within FAIRmat and giving insights into their kind of data and their everyday work life.

Our FAIRmat Tutorial 12: Getting started with NOMAD and NOMAD Oasis for research data management (RDM), given by Markus Scheidgen and Lauri Himanen was the highlight of our contributions. 

To show our love for data, our colleagues Siamak Nakhaie and Carolin Rehermann participated via coffee talks. Siamak spoke about "Copyright Fundamentals and Relevant Licenses for Research Data and Code" and Carolin about "Guide to FAIR Data Handling - Unlock the FAIRmat Advantage with NOMAD Software".

Let us keep the spirit up and celebrate our love for data all year.

NOMAD CAMELS is our new open-source software that generates future-oriented research data in line with the FAIR data principles in a simple way during experiments. Get to know more here.

On January 24-25, 2024, the 2nd FAIRmat workshop on data exchange and storage in photoemission spectroscopy took place in Berlin and online. A report and all speaker´s slides can be viewed here.