Interdisciplinary Consortium wants to make Research Data from Physics Sustainably usable
- Research
Prof. Kevin Kröninger is a particle physicist at TU Dortmund University. Together with scientists from all over the world, he conducts research at the large-scale research centre CERN in Geneva. The collisions produced by the particle accelerators there generate gigantic amounts of data from which the researchers hope to gain insights into the fundamental building blocks of matter. "Particle physics is a good example of how important a functioning data infrastructure is for research," says Kröninger. "We need to secure the data throughout its entire life cycle and make it accessible to all researchers. The NFDI funding is a push from Germany to make further improvements here."
The interdisciplinary consortium called "PUNCH4NFDI" will start work in autumn. PUNCH stands for "Particles, Universe, NuClei & Hadrons". The consortium represents the four research areas of particle physics, astroparticle physics, hadron and nuclear physics and astronomy. It is led by the research centre DESY - short for "Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron". The physics professors Johannes Albrecht, Kevin Kröninger and Bernhard Spaan from TU Dortmund University are involved. Both TU Dortmund and all scientific institutions in Germany are to benefit from the findings and new developments of the consortium.
As part of the funding, the Dortmund physicists will address the challenge of real-time data processing, among other things. The large experiments in particle physics produce so much data that it is impossible to store it all. Algorithms must therefore decide what is potentially interesting and therefore stored and what must be deleted immediately. With new methods such as machine learning, these decision-making algorithms are to be improved even further in the future. The consortium has also set itself the goal of sensitising young scientists to the topic of research data infrastructure. "The correct handling of research data is an important component of good scientific practice," explains Prof. Johannes Albrecht. The consortium will therefore develop teaching materials to raise awareness already among students and teach them the technical knowledge of how to secure their data and make it available to others.
TU Dortmund participates in consortia from other disciplines
The NFDI4Earth consortium, in which Prof. Nguyen Xuan Thinh from the Faculty of Spatial Planning at TU Dortmund University is involved, was also approved in the second funding round. Scientists from the Faculty of Physics at TU Dortmund University are also involved in the new consortium "FAIRmat" within the framework of the Collaborative Research Centres/Transregios 160 and 142.
The consortia in the first funding round have already been working on improving the research data infrastructure for a year: TU Dortmund is involved in "NFDI4Cat" with Prof. Norbert Kockmann, Alexander Behr, Prof. Gabriele Sadowski and Dr. Katrin Rosenthal from the Faculty of Bio- and Chemical Engineering, and in the "FAIRmat" consortium with Dr. Frauke Maevus. Frauke Maevus from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in "NFDI4Ing" as part of the Collaborative Research Centre/Transregios 188, and Prof. Stefan Kast, Nicolas Tielker and Prof. Paul Czodrowski from the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in "NFDI4Chem".
Further information:
- Particles, Universe, NuClei and Hadrons for the National Research Data Infrastructure (PUNCH4NFDI)
- forschungsdaten.info
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