Please have a look at the provisional programme of the LifeWatch ERIC BEeS Conference.
Latest update 26/05/2025
09:00 – 13:00 Working Table European RIs on Life component of the Biosphere: complementarities and synergies – On invitation only (see here the RIs involved)
09:00 – 13:00 Conference Registration
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 15:15 Session Institutional Opening Addresses
15:15 – 16:00 Man and the Sea | Prof. Anastasios Eleftheriou, HCMR
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break
16:30 – 17:15 Sharing and re-using computational workflows – WorkflowHub and FAIR Workflows in Biodiversity | Prof. Carole Goble, University of Manchester
17:15 – 18:00 The Dark Matter in Biology | Dr. Nikos Kyrpides, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
18:00 – 19:30 Round Table of the Biodiversty & Ecosystem European RIs
08:30-10:30 Session Ecological responses to Climate Change
- LifeWatch ERIC thematic service on Ecological responses to Climate Change (15′)
- Keynote Presentation (30′)
- 1 Selected Project presentation (15′)
- 6 Selected Scientific Presentations (prioritised user stories/research, using the infrastructure research products, 10′ each)
- Poster presentations within the poster session
10:30 -11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 13:00 Session Mapping life on planet: Biogeography in a changing world
- LifeWatch ERIC thematic service on Biogeography (15′)
- Biogeographical monitoring of Europe’s isnalnds: harnessing opportunities for multiple wins | Dr. Richard Field, University of Nottingham (30′)
- 1 Selected Project Presentation (15′)
- 6 Selected Scientific Presentations (prioritised user stories/research, using the infrastructure research products, 10′ each)
- Poster presentations within the poster session
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 16:30 Session Taxonomy: Identifying the units of diversity in life
- LifeWatch ERIC thematic service on Taxonomy (15′)
- What is in a name? The importance of clear taxonomic communication for biodiversity science & management | Dr. Tammy Horton, National Oceanography Centre (30′)
- 1 Selected Project Presentation (15′)
- 6 Selected Scientific Presentations (prioritised user stories/research, using the infrastructure research products, 10′ each)
- Poster presentations within the poster session
16:30 – 17:00 Coffee break
16:30 – 18:30 Poster presentations
16:30 – 18:30 Booth activities
- Hands on sessions on key LifeWatch ERIC services, vLabs and VREs
18:45 Departure from HCMR premises to Social Dinner
19:30 Winery Tour, Wine Tasting & Social Dinner at Scalarea Estate
08:30 – 10:30 Session Exploring boundaries of life hosting spaces: Habitat mapping
- LifeWatch ERIC thematic service on Habitat mapping (15′)
- 1 Selected Project Presentation (15′)
- 6 Selected Scientific Presentations (prioritised user stories/research, using the infrastructure research products, 10′ each)
- Poster presentations within the poster session
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 13:00 Session Biodiversity Observatory: Smart Systems for a Living Planet – Revolutionising Biodiversity Monitoring with Automation
- LifeWatch ERIC thematic service on Observation systems (15′)
- 1 Selected Project Presentation (15′)
- 6 Selected Scientific Presentations (prioritised user stories/research, using the infrastructure research products, 10′ each)
- Poster presentations within the poster session
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 16:30 Session Tracking the Wild: Unlocking Insights into Animal Movement, Behavior, and Biologging
- LifeWatch ERIC thematic service on Animal behavior & Space use tracking (15′)
- 1 Selected Project Presentation (15′)
- 6 Selected Scientific Presentations (prioritised user stories/research, using the infrastructure research products, 10′ each)
- Poster presentations within the poster session
16:30 – 17:00 Coffee break
16:30 – 18:00 Poster presentations
16:30 – 18:00 Booth activities
- Hands on sessions on key LifeWatch ERIC services, vLabs and VREs
18:00 – 18:30 Concluding remarks and future perspectives
Please check the table below to find out the training sessions of your interest. Click on the “+” icon to read its full description.
Plenary
Get a rapid tour of the MyLifeWatch portal and its Single Sign-On hub—the entry point to all LifeWatch ERIC services. Discover how a single credential unlocks datasets, analytical tools, and Virtual Research Environments (VREs) without extra log-ins. A live demo shows account setup and service browsing, followed by a short hands-on exercise. Leave knowing how to access, manage, and personalise LifeWatch ERIC resources in minutes, setting the stage for smoother, integrated research.
Room 1
Explore LifeWatch ERIC’s powerful search portal to pinpoint datasets, services, and publications in seconds. Learn advanced techniques such as federated queries that weave results from multiple research infrastructures into one coherent view. Discover LifeBlock, the blockchain layer that tracks provenance and ensures every record meets FAIR and trust-by-design standards. Hands-on exercises guide you through crafting queries, filtering results, and contributing new assets to the catalogue. Leave able to retrieve, integrate, and verify biodiversity data with confidence, boosting transparency and collaboration in your research.
Navigate LifeWatch ERIC’s visual Workflow Engine to build code-free analyses. Through the MyLifeWatch portal, you can drag-and-drop data sources, services, and external tools into a single pipeline. Watch live demos of smart scheduling, provenance capture, and one-click reruns for full reproducibility. Hands-on practice lets you design, execute, and monitor your own workflow end-to-end. See how templates and sharing options accelerate collaboration across projects and teams. Leave equipped to automate complex research tasks and reuse workflows throughout the LifeWatch ERIC ecosystem.
During this session, participants will go through the main functionalities of the new version of the LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue, designed and implemented to improve biodiversity digital resource discoverability by promoting the information exchange and sharing among organisations and research infrastructures. Participants will learn about the relevant challenges for the effective use of biodiversity digital resources, the importance of metadata, the FAIRness assessment, and will benefit from the new features of the Metadata Catalogue to address such challenges.
Room 2
Description Coming Soon
Join us for an engaging training session where we’ll explore some of the key functionalities and products of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and the LifeWatch Species Information Backbone. We’ll kick things off with a fun surprise activity to test your marine species knowledge— don’t worry, all the answers will be revealed as we dive into how WoRMS can help you find them! This session is a great opportunity to discover valuable tools and data while enjoying a light and interactive start.
This session will guide participants through the CIMPAL index workflow for mapping and assessing the Cumulative IMPact of invasive ALien species, implemented as an e-tool under LifeWatch ERIC. This cloud computing webservice offers a flexible tool through a code-free friendly GUI to facilitate reproducibility of the assessments. Participants will learn about the CIMPAL main components, the new algorithm implementations, the user-tailored options available and how to prepare the data to run the CIMPAL index calculator. This webservice was implemented in a collaboration within LifeWatch ERIC Internal Joint Initiative, involving researchers from different national nodes, namely Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. This work is also supported by developments within the HEU projects GES4SEAS and B-Cubed. Participants will benefit the most if they bring their own laptops to try along during the session.
13:00 – 14:30 | Lunch Break
Discover how LifeWatch ERIC connects IoT devices to near real-time dashboards and interactive maps. Learn how time series from sensors are visualised for environmental monitoring, and explore the LifeWatch Viewer to consult and publish GIS services. A live demo and hands-on session will guide you through connecting a sensor stream and exploring spatial data using interoperable tools across different platforms.
In this workshop, users will use the Radar Aeroecology Virtual Lab (RAVL) to investigate bird movement in The Netherlands. By using publicly available Meteorological Radar data from The Netherlands – users will collect, process and investigate data to identify peak-migration moments. To get started, an introduction will be given where readily available code can be executed to explore migration moments identified by the UvA AME-group. Afterwards, users will conduct their own analysis by using external datasets such as wind direction to identify potential migration moments. These potential migration moments are then investigated by collecting, processing visualising and verifying data.
Get an in-depth overview of the full lifecycle of semantic artefacts, from their conceptual planning to publication. With live demos, we will explore how semantic artefacts can be built using standards like SKOS or OWL using VocBench, a web-based platform that supports collaborative editing, version control, and semantic validation. The workflow continues with the publication of semantic artefacts on EcoPortal, where they are catalogued, registered with metadata, and made accessible for wider reuse. To contextualise the application of semantic artefacts, a real-world case study will be presented showing how they are integrated and used within a broader data ecosystem. The session concludes with an open discussion of lessons learned, best practices, and potential for reuse.
DataLabs is a cloud-based environment that enables collaborative coding in R, Python, and MATLAB to support biodiversity and ecosystem research. Seamlessly integrated with the LifeWatch Italy Data Portal, it provides direct access to curated datasets and allows you to enrich your work with structured metadata, ensuring alignment with FAIR data principles. With DataLabs, you and your team can work together in a shared environment to develop and refine code, seamlessly integrate analyses with high-quality datasets, and turn your workflows into deployable web services. The platform is designed to foster transparency, ensure reproducibility, and actively support the principles of Open Science. Join a community of researchers accelerating knowledge through shared data, tools, and results.
Description Coming Soon