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Speaker: Claudia Draxl (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Deputy Speaker: Thomas T.M. Palstra (University of Twente)

The association FAIR-DI e.V. was founded with the aim at building a worldwide data infrastructure for big data from materials science, engineering, and astronomy following the FAIR principles. FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-purposable (or Re-usable), as suggested by Wilkinson and coworkers (Sci. Data 3, 160018, 2016).

FAIR-DI advocates the sharing of scientific raw data to advance research in science and engineering. This includes 

  • The extensive description of data by metadata such that data from different studies can be compared and used for other purposes than those initially intended;
  • Building an infrastructure that makes big data available and accessible to other research labs in academia and industry;
  • Making data ready for analysis by artificial-intelligence methods.

FAIR-DI e.V. promotes innovation and awareness, reaching out to scientists, industry, and society.

The association works closely with the NFDI consortium FAIRmat and the NOMAD Laboratory. Its German members are represented in FAIRmat, advocating the interests of experimental and theoretical condensed-matter and chemical physics in the development of the National Reasearch Data Infrastructure (NFDI). FAIRmat operates the NOMAD Laboratory, which offers cutting-edge tools for collecting, storing, and presenting materials-science data.

The association FAIR-DI was founded on September 7, 2018 and currently consists of 12 member institutes located in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.