Berlin Science Week provides international scientists and science driven organisations with a stage to share insights into current topics, discuss grand challenges and envision the future together.

The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) aims to systematically develop, sustainably secure and make the data sets of science and research accessible, as well as networking them (inter-)nationally. It is currently being set up in a process driven by science as a networked structure of individually acting consortia.

On November 9, scientists from various research institutions will present their research topics regarding the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) as part of a science slam.

We look forward to our science slammers from the NFDI science community:

• Jonas Kasmanas, NFDI4Microbiota
• Ranjit Singh, KonsortSWD
• Julia Philipp, GHGA
• David Clarke, PUNCH4NFDI
• Mark Greiner, FAIRmat

This is a digital event. If you would like to attend, please book your spot via fokus-event@fokus.fraunhofer.de with the subject line NFDI Science Slam. Your e-mail address will only be used to ensure your access. Access to the event will be provided after registration by the organiser.

For all spectators on short notice: Shortly before the event begins, the link will appear on this site. Add the event to your favourites and receive a reminder via email.

Opening Act: Prof. Dr. Sure-Vetter

York Sure-Vetter is appointed director of the NFDI since March 2020 and professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He has distinguished research experience in artificial intelligence and data science. His career has led him to various stations in the science system and in the free economy alike.

Among other stations, he was president of GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, the largest German research infrastructure for the social sciences, from 2009 to 2015. At the same time, he held a professorship first at the University of Koblenz-Landau and then at the University of Mannheim. In 2015, he followed the call to the KIT Institute AIFB (Institute for Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods), where he taught and conducted research as a professor. Furthermore he was director at the Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI) of KIT as well as at the FZI Research Center for Informatics.

Introduction and moderation: Prof. Dr. Konrad Förstner and Dr. Sonja Schimmler

Konrad Förstner holds a joint professorship for Data and Information Literary at ZB MED – Information Center for Life Sciences and TH Köln.

The research of his group covers a broad spectrum of applications of data science, bioinformatics and systems biology methods in the life sciences. This includes the integration and interpretation of large data sets – mainly generated using high-throughput sequencing technologies but also biomedical text corpora – with the aim to translate them into novel biological and medical insights. Additionally, the group runs projects that use and extend the knowledge commons by making research outcomes more open and FAIR. Since more than a decade he is advocating open science with all its facetes (data, publications, source code of research software, educational resources, publication metrics etc.) and is active in several communites promoting and implementing this. Furthermore, he tries to empower others – researcher and people in information centric roles – by teaching digitial literacy and skills to work more efficiently and effectively with data, information and knowledge.

Sonja Schimmler leads the research group “Digitalisation and Science” at the Weizenbaum Institute and at Fraunhofer FOKUS. She is also an associated researcher at the Technical University of Berlin. 

In her research, she focuses on the digitalisation and opening of science and puts a special emphasis on research data infrastructures. Her research interests range from semantic web and linked data over data science and artificial intelligence to software engineering and human-centered computing. She is doing excellent, interdisciplinary and application-oriented research.

She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich. She studied Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich and at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA).

Slam contributions will be presented by scientists from the NFDI research community.