Research data is the basis of scientific knowledge. However, valuable measurement results often remain unused after a project has ended or can hardly be related to data from other disciplines. The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) sets standards and creates services so that researchers from different disciplines can easily find and reuse data. Knowledge is no longer lost, but can be incorporated into new research projects. This is why the German federal and state governments have decided to fund the ten consortia involved in the second NFDI funding round with roughly EUR 71 million until the end of 2028. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) participates in five of these consortia that manage data from individual disciplines.

The five consortia where KIT is involved cover a broad range of research topics including environment and climate, materials sciences, and physics fundamental research.

Climate change, extreme weather events, and natural hazards present growing challenges for policymakers, public authorities, and municipalities. Planning flood protection, securing water resources, or developing measures for the adaptation to climate change – all this requires large amounts of environmental and climate data. However, this data is often stored in different formats and systems, making it difficult to evaluate them together. The NFDI4Earth consortium facilitates access to this data: “Through a centralized portal, researchers have quick and easy access to data on climate, the environment, and natural hazards,” said Professor Jan Cermak, head of KIT’s Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research Atmospheric Trace Gases and Remote Sensing. “Our aim now is to refine these offers together with the scientific community and to make sure that any knowledge gained will be incorporated more quickly, for example, into climate adaptation and risk prevention measures.”


Making Better Use of the Potential of Expensive Large-scale Research Facilities

Research facilities investigating photons and neutrons generate measurement data of high scientific value. In many cases, such data can only be reused to a limited extent later on, while its collection usually requires considerable investments from the public sector. The DAPHNE4NFDI consortium ensures that such datasets are preserved for the long term so that they are available for new scientific research questions. “This significantly increases the return on public investments for new and complex research infrastructures, as the data is not only used for the project in which it is generated, but far beyond. Thus, it forms the basis of other scientific and technological developments,” said Professor Jan-Dierk Grunwaldt from KIT’s Institute for Chemical Technology and Polymer Chemistry. In the second funding phase, digital and AI-based tools are expected to help make research faster and more reproducible.


Developing New Materials Faster

Be it more powerful batteries, more resilient materials, or more sustainable production methods: Developing new materials requires the collaboration of many research groups and the exchange of huge amounts of data. This was complicated in the past due to differing data formats and missing standards.


To address this problem, the NFDI-MatWerk consortium is going to establish common standards and develop digital tools for materials research. This enables the researchers to exchange data on the structure, properties, and production of materials, evaluate it together, and design new materials in a more targeted manner. “Today, developing and handling advanced materials is hardly conceivable without exchanging large quantities of data,” said Professor Peter Gumbsch from KIT’s Institute for Applied Materials.


FAIRmat also aims to advance materials research through a powerful data infrastructure. This was the motivation for building the international NOMAD platform, which is meanwhile being used by thousands of researchers. “If you want to develop new materials, it must be possible to efficiently evaluate results from experiments and simulations and compare them to each other,” said Professor Christof Wöll from KIT’s Institute of Functional Interfaces. “Our NOMAD platform supports scientists in documenting data systematically, automating workflows, and sharing research results. This creates the basis for reproducible, data-driven, and increasingly AI-based materials research.”


Exploring the Origin of the Universe

How did the universe come into being? What is matter made of? And what are the forces that hold the world together at its core? Researchers are conducting some of the most extensive experiments worldwide to find answers to these questions. Here, large amounts of data are generated, which need to be preserved for the long term, processed, and made usable across various research disciplines. The PUNCH4NFDI consortium makes a contribution to this end by developing common data and computing infrastructures. Research in this sector has yielded fundamental insights in recent years, including the discovery of the Higgs boson, the detection of the quark gluon plasma, and the first image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.


“KIT pools two key strengths in the consortium: our expertise in managing large, distributed research data repositories and our leading role in astroparticle physics,” said Dr. Andreas Haungs from KIT’s Institute for Astroparticle Physics. “Especially in multi-messenger astrophysics, which combines data from telescopes, gravitational wave and particle detectors, information from different experiments must be available in near real-time so that it can be analyzed cooperatively by the researchers. We’ll continue to further refine our high-performance infrastructures.”


Long-Term Future of NFDI Secured

Along with the current funding decision, the German federal and state governments have decided to continue funding the National Research Data Infrastructure in the long term and to further develop its structure. This secures the existence of the services set up over the past years and establishes them as the central infrastructure of the German research landscape.

More information:

Decision by the Joint Science Conference (GWK) on the long-term development of the NFDI (in German)

NFDI announcement on the decision made by the federal and state governments (in German)

In close partnership with society, KIT develops solutions for urgent challenges – from climate change, energy transition and sustainable use of natural resources to artificial intelligence, sovereignty and an aging population. As The University in the Helmholtz Association, KIT unites scientific excellence from insight to application-driven research under one roof – and is thus in a unique position to drive this transformation. As a University of Excellence, KIT offers its more than 10,000 employees and 22,800 students outstanding opportunities to shape a sustainable and resilient future. KIT – Science for Impact.