Networking and dissemination activities
In 2019 we organized several activities and our annual National eScience Symposium to promote eScience in the Netherlands. Below some highlights.
NWA Matchmaking: VWData Symposium
On 18 March, we co-organized the VWData Symposium ‘AI, AI, AI: of Value and Vigilance’. The symposium featured several inspirational keynote speakers, including Prof. Janneke Gerards (Professor of Fundamental Rights, Utrecht University) and Hans Bos (National Technology Officer, Microsoft Netherlands). Project leaders from the VWData Program presented their latest findings and showcased live demonstrations and project videos. This was followed by an open and plenary debate among all symposium participants.
Principal Investigator Day: Sharing Expertise Enhances Collaborations and Advances Research
On 19 April, the annual Principal Investigator Day took place at the Johan Cruijff ArenA. This event brought together PIs and eScience research engineers to share knowledge and expertise. The open atmosphere and breakout sessions stimulated in-depth discussion on the scientific challenges and the contributions of the eScience Engineers in each domain.
National eScience Symposium 2019
On 21 November, we held our 6th National eScience Symposium at the Johan Cruijff ArenA, Amsterdam. Titled ‘Digital Challenges in Open Science’, the event drew more than 250 participants and featured 10 interdisciplinary sessions on the challenges and opportunities of open science in domains such as health and life sciences, the humanities and social sciences. The event also saw the launch of a new FAIR Software website and the announcement of the Young eScientist Award 2019.
NL-RSE 2019
As an important backer of the Netherlands Research Software Engineering community (NL-RSE), we helped to host the first NL-RSE19 Conference to take place in the Netherlands. The event, held at the Johan Cruijff ArenA on 20 November, brought together research software users and developers to share knowledge, organize new initiatives and raise awareness for the scientific recognition of research software.
Young eScientist Award 2019
Lise Stork was announced winner of the Young eScientist Award 2019 during the 6th National eScience Symposium on 21 November. Stork, a PhD researcher at Leiden University's Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), received the award for her project proposal to make historical biodiversity data directly available to researchers. As winner, Stork will receive 50,000 euros worth of expertise from the Netherlands eScience Center to develop her proposal.
Workshops and trainings
As the national center of excellence for the development and application of research software and methodologies, we place great importance on sharing eScience knowledge and expertise with the outside world. As such, we regularly organize trainings and workshops in areas such as machine learning, software development and programming. In 2019 we continued to build on these efforts by (co)organizing ten events.
Presentations
Besides organizing events, our engineers actively participate in local and international scientific events by, for example, giving keynote presentations, taking part in panel discussions and meetings, managing workshops or highlighting our expertise and activities. Some of the major events we attended in 2019 include the Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems Conference, the Digital Humanities Conference, Earth Observation, Science & Society Symposium, SuperComputing 19, SURF Super Day, PLAN-E workshops in Rome and Lund, the ePLAN workshop on Computational Science and Physics@Veldhoven 2019.