RESTORE4Cs School Competition on Coastal Wetlands

school competition on coastal wetlands

The RESTORE4Cs project launched a School Competition to take place on 16 May 2025, online, dedicated to students aged 12 and over across Europe.

The initiative is designed to introduce students to the world of coastal wetlands, their essential ecological functions, their role in biodiversity, and how they contribute to climate resilience.

The competition features a Serious Game, that help students understand these key concepts and explore the broader topics of ecosystem services, biodiversity and sustainable management practices.

You can register your class by 15 May (at noon). Learn more: https://www.restore4cs.eu/restore4cs-school-competition

EVERSE Webinar on Software Quality Landscape and Indicators

Software Quality

The EVERSE project (https://everse.software) aims to create a framework for research software and code excellence, collaboratively designed and championed by the research communities, in pursuit of building a European network of Research Software Quality and setting the foundations of a future Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence.

The project has organised a series of webinars, the first of which will happen on Tuesday, 15th April 2025, at 10 AM CEST. This event takes place in the context of the project’s work on community-led best practices for developing high-quality research software, which has the objective of building a knowledge hub called the Research Software Quality toolkit (RSQKit).

Following a recent landscape survey on best practices in Research Software Quality (RSQ), Jutta Schnabel (Friedriech-Alexander University) will present the results of the work led so far, and Daniel Garijo (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) will focus on indicators and dimension for RSQ.

For the full agenda and registration details, visit this page: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1531998

Biodiversity Digital Twins and the Destination Earth Ecosystem

Rome, Italy

The BioDT Project is reaching the end of its mandate and is organising, in collaboration with Destination Earth (DestinE), its final event taking place in Rome on 3 April 2025.

The event, available also for online participation, will highlight BioDT’s key results relevant for the European Commission’s Digital Twin strategy and its integration with the DestinE ecosystem.

Sustainability, interoperability, and the potential adoption of BioDT’s results by European Research Infrastructures and data spaces will be the key topics to drive discussions, scientific presentations and panel debates. Moreover, participants will assist to live demonstrations of prototype Digital Twins (pDTs) developed during the project.

For the agenda, registration, and further details, visit:

https://biodt.eu/events/biodiversity-digital-twins-and-destination-earth-ecosystem

FAIR-IMPACT Workshop on Data FAIRness assessment with F-UJI

F-UJI webinar

The FAIR-IMPACT Project supports the ambitious goal to realise an EOSC of FAIR data and services, by promoting the implementation of FAIR-enabling practices, tools and services in Europe and beyond. In order to expand Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable solutions across EOSC, the project is identifying proven domain solutions and facilitating their interoperable uptake across scientific domains.

By doing so, it will contribute to transforming the way researchers share and exploit research outputs within and across research disciplines, and to the facilitation of scientific multi-disciplinary cooperation, improving public trust and reproducibility in science.

Within this framework, the project organises a series of public workshops, the FAIR Implementation Series, and on 20 March is happening the next one, called “Using F-UJI to Assess the FAIRness of your Data“.

The workshop will introduce the automated FAIR data assessment tool (F-UJI) and showcase experiences of performed assessments and demos on how to use the tool.

For registration and detailed agenda, please visit:

https://fair-impact.eu/events/fair-impact-events/using-f-uji-assess-fairness-your-data

EGI Conference 2025 and Call for Contributions

EGI Conference 2025

EGI is the federation of computing and storage resource providers: an open ecosystem for research and innovation with the mission to deliver advanced computing and data analytics services for research and innovation. The federation supports data-intensive research with a wide range of advanced computing services.

Every year, the EGI Foundation (the coordinating body of EGI) organises the federation’s flagship event, the EGI Conference, gathering international scientific communities, computing and service providers, representatives of European research projects, security experts, community managers, and policy makers.

All these stakeholders come together to advance research and innovation in data-intensive processing and analytics. If you want to get a feel for the conference, we were there in 2024 to present a few of our services, and we summarised the main highlights in this article.

Besides the talks and presentations, this conference offers a safe and open environment for discussions and networking, making it a key reference event in this domain.

This year’s edition will take place in Santander, Spain, from 2 to 6 June, hosted by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain’s largest public research institution and a key player in the European Research Area (ERA).

The organisers invite participants to share their expertise and ideas with the #EGI2025 audience through a Call for Contributions. They are accepting proposals for short and long talks, posters, and demonstrations. The call opened on 3 February and will remain open until 20 March.

For more information about the EGI Conference 2025, please visit: https://www.egi.eu/event/egi2025/

BioDT Webinar on digital modelling for nature protection

BioDT Webinar

Online

The Biodiversity Digital Twin (BioDT) project offers advanced simulation and prediction models to tackle critical global biodiversity challenges, addressing complex biodiversity dynamics through practical use cases. LifeWatch ERIC is part of this impressive consortium of 22 partners, all working together to drive evidence-based solutions for biodiversity protection and restoration across Europe.

On 27 February, the project members will host a webinar dedicated to the role of Digital Twins in environmental protection: experts from leading Digital Twins initiatives will gather together to discuss how technologies such as real-time monitoring and advanced simulations can be leveraged to support environmental protection and disaster response. Moreover, a cross-collaboration between these digital tools will enhance their impact, and this is the main aspect the webinar is focused on, with examples of practical applications for research institutes, environmental agencies and emergency responders.

The one-hour webinar will feature speakers from InterTwin, DT-GEO, TerraDT, ClimateDT and DestinE, and a round of interactive discussions.

Agenda and registration here: https://biodt.eu/events/biodt-webinar-how-can-cross-use-digital-modelling-tools-help-nature-protection

BEeS 2025: LifeWatch ERIC Annual Conference

Heraklion, Greece

The BEeS (Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience) Conference 2025 will gather researchers, policymakers, and experts to tackle the Triple Planetary Crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution) through eScience and European Research Infrastructures (RIs).
This year’s conference will explore synergies between LifeWatch ERIC services and emerging technologies to drive innovation for a sustainable future. The program features plenary sessions, thematic services, research presentations, and hands-on demonstrations, highlighting the crucial role of technology, data, and collaboration in
addressing global environmental challenges.
Participants will engage in discussions on biological diversity and conservation, ecological responses to climate change, biogeography, taxonomy, biodiversity monitoring, and habitat mapping. The event will also include interactive booth activities, poster presentations, and training sessions, offering insights into Virtual Research
Environments (VREs), Virtual Laboratories (vLabs), and other digital tools.
The conference welcomes researchers in biodiversity, ecosystems, and eScience, with a special focus on early-career scientists, including PhD and Master’s students. The BEeS 2025 Conference will be hosted by the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology, and Aquaculture (IMBBC), in
Heraklion, Greece, from June 30 to July 3, 2025.

For more information visit: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2025/

LifeWatch Belgium launches citizen science initiative

Belgium

On Saturday 22 March 2025, nature and science lovers in Belgium will gather on the Belgian Coast for the 8th edition of the “Big Seashell Survey” to help researchers gain a deeper understanding of the Belgian North Sea. 

Thanks to the initiative, scientists will gather valuable insights into the distribution of marine life, the impact of climate change on biodiversity, and the presence of non-native species. To do that, they will explore differences in the shell composition of more than 400 kilometers of the North Sea coastline from morning to afternoon.

Enthusiastic shell experts will be present at various coastal locations to provide necessary instructions and materials. No prior registration is required: participants can simply join at their preferred location.

For more information, visit: https://www.lifewatch.be/event/big-seashell-survey

Launch of EVERSE Network of Research Software Quality

EVERSE Network launch

Online

The EVERSE Network aims to develop a quality framework for research software. The EVERSE (EU-funded project) vision is to establish a Community of Practice to provide standard and documented practices around tools and training for software developers, researchers who code, research software engineers and service providers.

The project announces the EVERSE Network for Research Software Quality Launch Event, taking place online at 10:00 CET on Tuesday 18 February.

The overall goal is to improve policy and practice of research software in Europe and beyond, with opportunities for participants to contribute with their own inputs into the objectives and activities of the network.

They will benefit of practical support in writing better code and by learning the meaning and principles of software quality for the research domain.

Registrations are open at https://indico.cern.ch/e/eversenetworklaunch.

22nd Italian Ornithology Conference

Lecce, Italy

CISO (Centro Italiano Studi Ornitologici), University of Salento and the Institute of Research on Terrestrial Ecosystems of the National Research Council (CNR-IRET), LifeWatch Italy and Or.Me. organise the 22nd Italian Ornithology Conference. The conference will gather ornithologists and natural science enthusiasts together in Lecce, a first edition for the Apulia region in more than 40-year history of ornithology conferences.

Participants are invited to submit proposals for congress, which will take place from 8 to 12 September 2025.

The conference offers a selected range of topics for which abstracts for oral presentations and posters can be submitted. We aim at collecting contributions exploring the avifauna of the arid-steppe environments of the Mediterranean, global changes and emerging trends, bird migration, conservation, ecology and behaviour of birds, etc.
For further information, please have a look at their detailed description before submitting an abstract (SESSION TOPICS & SYMPOSIA TOPICS)

More details here: https://www.lifewatchitaly.eu/en/22-convegno-italiano-di-ornitologia