ExPaNDS partners met at the grant kick-off meeting last September 2019.

19th November 2019

. The project 

aims to publish and map the data behind the thousands of successful published scientific papers generated by Europe's Photon and Neutron Research Infrastructures (

PaN

RIs) – which every year create petabytes of data – and make it available to all.  

 

Prof

essor Volker

G

ü

lzow,

IT Director

 at DESY, 

explained during the kick-off meeting in September 2019:

 "

There is a wealth of data behind all the scientific papers that are published each year. However, it is increasingly difficult to get access to all this valuable information. We propose to make this data accessible through the

European Open Science Cloud

so that it's potential benefits can be fully explored and exploited by scientists and the public alike. In this age of data driven science this is an important step to accelerating new advances in science from European photon and neutron research infrastructure."

 

The project brings together a network of ten national

PaN

RIs from across Europe

as well as EGI,

a federated e-Infrastructure set up to provide advanced computing services for research

.  It will deliver added value data science services through the EOSC framework. The EOSC currently provides a range of services that fits the ever-increasing need of scientific experiments held at various

PaN

RI's across Europe.  These needs are driven by modern detector technology that is delivering very high data rates for individual experiments. 

 

Prof Helmut

Dosch

, Chair of the League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources (LEAPS)

and Director of DESY

 in Hamburg

added:

 "

According to

data from

LEAPS,

these

user communities now have over

23,400 unique articles published in peer-reviewed journals, and more than 24,000

direct users

, and

with the addition

of the Neutron community these numbers increase further

. 

Users expect high quality data analysis services from

our respective Research Institute

s

(RI)

, and want

services

to

be standardised, interoperable and integrated as time on instruments is often granted to users at different RIs. 

This new collaboration supported by the European Commission forms a strategic positioning to help

LEAPS move towards

greater unification of

our facilities

to the benefit of the scientific community

."

 

T

he primary goal of

ExPaNDS

–

the

h

armonisation

of metadata, interoperability of services and

standardization

–

has

become of the utmost importance.

This

not only simplifies and improves the user experience,

but

also

opens up

access to new groups

of academic and industrial users, with little or no

previous experience in

these fields

.

 

A distributed, but federated,

cloud-based

environment would

also

allow for

harm

oni

s

ed

access, and more importantly, easy data sharing.

ExPaNDS

members will collaboratively strive to

realise

the EU' s Fifth Freedom: to create free movement of knowledge, equipping members to better engage with new

initiatives.

 

About

ExPaNDS

 

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Photon and Neutron Data Service (

ExPaNDS

) project will expand, accelerate and support the data management and data services provided through the EOSC for major national Photon and Neutron Research Infrastructures (

PaN

RIs) in delivering world-leading science. 

 

It is an ambitious project which will create enormous opportunities for the scientific community and through their findings for humankind across the globe. This will be achieved through the c

ollaboration and federation of 10 national

PaN

RIs

from across Europe based on EOSC

services, and

will become a game-changer for the scientific user community. 

 

ExPaNDS

will make the majority of

PaN

RIs data ‘open’ following the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) according to the user’s needs, and to harmonise efforts to migrate facility's data analysis workflows to EOSC platforms enabling them to be shared in a uniform way.

Beneficiaries for the grant include

:

 

• Stiftung

  Deutsches

  Elektronen

  -Synchrotron DESY

   

• Paul Scherrer

  Institut

  (PSI)

   

• Diamond Light Source Limited (Diamond)

   

• United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI)

   

• Synchrotron Soleil

  Société

  Civile

  (SOLEIL)

   

• Stichting

  E

  GI

   

• ALBA Synchrotron

• Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin Fur

  Materialien

  Und

  Energie Gmbh (HZ

  B)

   

• Helmholtz-

  Zentrum

    Dresden

  -

  Rossendorf

   

  Ev

  (HZ

  DR)

   

• Lunds

   

  Universitet

  (MAX IV)

   

• E

  LETTRA

  -

  Sincrotrone

  Trieste

  Scpa