OntoPortal Workshop 2025

OntoPortal Workshop

The OntoPortal Workshop 2025, hosted by Freie Universität Berlin at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, took place in Berlin from 29 September to 2 October.

Every year, the Workshop brings together members of the OntoPortal Alliance to discuss strategies and future activities. The OntoPortal Alliance is in fact a consortium of several research and infrastructure teams dedicated to promoting the development of ontology repositories, in science and other disciplines, based on the open, collaboratively developed OntoPortal open source software (Source: Clement Jonquet, Jennifer L Vendetti, Guillaume Alviset, Ilaria Rosati, John Graybeal, et al.. OntoPortal Workshop 2024 Report. INRAE; Stanford University. 2024. ffhal-04891214f).

These teams develop and maintain several openly accessible semantic artefact catalogues, or ontology repositories, in multiple domains. Among them, LifeWatch ERIC manages EcoPortal, the repository of semantic resources for ecology and related fields (https://ecoportal.lifewatch.eu).

This year, representatives from EcoPortal (Ilaria Rosati, Martina Pulieri and Michael Griniezakis), AgroPortal (Clement Jonquet, Imad Bourouche), EarthPortal (Christelle Pierkot and Hakim Allem), BiodivPortal (Naouel Karam, Ralph Schäfermeier and Adrian Paschke), BioPortal (Mark Musen, Jennifer Vendetti, Michael Dorf and Alex Skrenchuk), MatPortal (Alexandru-Aurelian Todor), OntoPortal-Astro (Baptiste Cecconi), CHPortal (Beatrice Markhoff, Louise Parkin), SocioPortal (Darren Bell), HSPortal (Anais Guillem) and other guests from NFDI (Roman Baum and Jakob Voss) joined the discussions.

Key topics included ontology development lifecycle, MOD-API implementation, new developments including generative AI and OntoPortal, and collaborations in projects and initiatives.

LifeWatch ERIC on Austria’s joining DiSSCo RI via OSCA

Dissco - OSCA

A strategic boost to European collaboration: LifeWatch ERIC warmly welcomes Austria’s integration into DiSSCo via OSCA. This national-level mobilisation is a model of how local strengths can be federated into a European knowledge system for biodiversity and ecosystem research. Natural History Museums and Botanical Gardens form undoubtedly the largest Research Infrastructure in Europe. The added value their specimens and their research products they take from joining Research Infrastructure is huge and it provides a serious return to the countries and societies invested in them.

  • Complementary missions, shared vision: DiSSCo’s work in digitising and harmonising specimen-based collections can be used in combination with LifeWatch ERIC’s focus on ecosystem-level observations, Virtual Research Environments (VREs), and computational workflows. Together, the two Research Infrastructures can cover a large spectrum from specimen or individual to system.
  • Enhancing synthetic knowledge production: With DiSSCo offering curated, voucher-based data, the synergy with LifeWatch ERIC, which provides semantic interoperability, cross-domain analytics, and modular service composition, synthetic knowledge, that is, integrated, cross-scale, and policy-relevant is created. This alone is a big leap to shaping the science of the future and the training of younger generations becomes a must in order for the countries to receive the full benefits from such concerted research practices.
  • One Health and Environmental Intelligence: We echo DiSSCo’s focus on the UN’s One Health Framework. LifeWatch ERIC’s ecological observatories, data repositories and analytical services and DiSSCo’s curated collections form a powerful foundation for early warning systems on animal diseases, assessments of zoonotic risks, and biodiversity severe change.
  • Infrastructure alignment and EOSC integration: LifeWatch ERIC supports DiSSCo’s alignment with EOSC, open science principles, and digital twins. Our joint efforts enhance FAIR data flows, reduce fragmentation, and increase reuse of biodiversity knowledge for research and innovation. DiSSCo’s continuous support to FAIR Data Objects (FDOs) forms a good example for the remaining Research Infrastructures dedicated on the Biosphere of the ENVRI Science Cluster in EOSC ecosystem.
  • Pooling resources and building capacity: Like DiSSCo, LifeWatch ERIC believes in shared platforms, training pathways, and economies of scale across Europe. Our collaboration offers smaller institutions access to best-in-class tools, methods, and community practices.
  • Reinforcing the European Research Area: OSCA’s connection to DiSSCo and, by extension, to the ENVRI cluster strengthens Austria’s role in the ERA. Together, we foster a cohesive and agile infrastructure ecosystem serving science, policy, and society.

EULAC EnergyTRAN mobility event in Seville

EULAC ENERGYTRAN mobility event

On 20 May 2025, the second day of the EULAC EnergyTRAN mobility event took place at the Statutory Seat of LifeWatch ERIC, located in Plaza de España in Seville, Spain. This initiative is part of the EU-LAC cooperation framework, aiming to strengthen scientific collaboration between European and Latin American research infrastructures, particularly in the environmental and energy transition domains.

The second day gathered a diverse delegation of Latin American representatives, including members of: Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM), Argentina (Julian Asinsten, Martin del Castillo, Lilia Inés Stubrin, Valeria Arza, Martin Obaya, Emanuel López), Tecnológico de Aguascalientes, México (Adrian Bonilla-Petriciolet, Didilia Ileana Mendoza-Castillo), National High Technology Center (CeNAT), Costa Rica (Jazmín Calderón Quirós), and LifeWatch ERIC team members (Francisco Manuel Sánchez, Antonio José Sáenz, Joaquin López, Julio López Paneque, Iria Soto, Ana Mellado, Maite Irazábal).

Throughout the day, participants from Latin America had the opportunity to engage directly with LifeWatch ERIC members and explore the organisation’s technological, analytical, and data management services. Sessions included:

  • An overview of LifeWatch ERIC’s data management services and technological resources such as the Scientific Knowledge Graph, LifeBlock, and the MyLifeWatch platform;
  • Demonstrations of data loggers and sensor networks for environmental monitoring;
  • A detailed showcase of the collaborative research platform and analytical workflows developed within the EnergyTRAN project;
  • Insightful presentations on the long-term sustainability of LifeWatch ERIC tools and their application in other European projects, such as AGROSERV and Microbes4Climate.

These in-person meetings are precious opportunities to cultivate openness and constructive dialogue, ensuring long-term international cooperation.

The event concluded with an exchange of ideas for future collaborations and opportunities, which are vital to sustain and expand the EU-LAC research partnerships and respond to shared challenges across regions.

LifeWatch ERIC at the conference that shapes the future of Research Infrastructures

The conference “Research Infrastructures in a Changing Global, Environmental and Socio-economic Context,” organised as part of the Belgian Presidency of the European Council, is taking place today at the Royal Library of Belgium. This conference, running on 4 and 5 June, aims to highlight the crucial role of research infrastructures in addressing societal, global, and economic challenges. The Belgian presidency programme prioritises research and innovation to foster open strategic autonomy, enhance the valorisation of research outcomes, and reinforce the role of research in overcoming industrial and societal challenges. This conference aims to address global challenges through collaborative and innovative research infrastructures.

Inmaculada Figueroa, Vice Director General for International Consortia, Organisations and Research Infrastructures (Spanish Research Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities), is moderating the “Research Infrastructures as Actors of Open Strategic Autonomy” session. Figueroa is also a member of the EOSC Steering Board and a delegate to the LifeWatch ERIC General Assembly.

The event features keynotes and sessions over two days, focusing on the future vision for research infrastructures, their socio-economic and environmental impact, and the broader research infrastructure ecosystem. The sessions, moderated by personnel from the European Commission and national research bodies, focus on the impact of global contexts, challenges in supply chains, digitalisation, AI, and the role of European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERIC).

These sessions offer significant advantages by providing shared resources and expertise across Europe. They enhance collaborative research efforts, reduce duplication of efforts, and foster innovation by enabling access to state-of-the-art facilities and data. Being part of the dialogue and shaping the European research landscape at different levels is crucial for the ERICs to achieve their missions. Our CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, also participated in the conference, as we aim to advance biodiversity and ecosystem research and contribute significantly to addressing environmental challenges such as climate change.

LifeWatch ERIC and eLTER RI: together to advance biodiversity research 

During the final stakeholder meeting of the Europa Biodiversity Observation Network on 27-28 May, LifeWatch ERIC CEO Christos Arvanitidis and the Chair of LTER-Europe and Coordinator of eLTER ESFRI process, Michael Mirtl, signed a Memorandum of Cooperation between LifeWatch ERIC and eLTER RI. This Memorandum aims to take the collaboration between the two organisations to the next level by combining the resources and expertise to advance ecosystem research and biodiversity conservation across Europe. LifeWatch ERIC and eLTER RI have collaborated on several flagship projects, such as ALTER-Net, ENVRI, ENVRIplus, and ENVRI FAIR.

A common mission

LifeWatch ERIC and eLTER RI are committed to addressing environmental challenges by conducting long-term, multidisciplinary research to understand and mitigate the impacts of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss on ecosystems. The common mission is to enable a better future through integrated research efforts and shared data resources, leading to a deeper understanding of our planet’s ecosystems and contributing to the conservation and sustainability of life on Earth.

Memorandum of Cooperation’s goals

The collaboration will combine the potential of both Research Infrastructures, drawing on their respective areas of expertise. While LifeWatch ERIC aims to use advanced digital technologies to support biodiversity and ecosystems by facilitating data creation, access, quality control, management and dissemination, eLTER’s support of extensive documentation and integrated access to multidisciplinary data will provide access to a seamless and robust data services ecosystem.

The collaboration will also focus on aligning catalogues of resources, standardising data infrastructure and ensuring interoperable data and metadata standards to create a unified ‘data lake’ for researchers to access. In addition, creating virtual laboratories will facilitate the analysis of biodiversity data using LifeWatch ERIC’s advanced ICT technology and eLTER’s in-situ environmental data.

To achieve these goals, the Memorandum of Cooperation outlines several joint activities, spanning from the development and implementation of common tools and service-oriented architectures to enhance data interoperability, such as the Tesseract and NaaVRE technical composability layer and LifeBlock blockchain technology, to the organisation of joint dissemination, engagement and training activities addressed to their stakeholders, including EU and national decision-makers, funders, and the broader scientific community.

Inmaculada Figueroa opens the 1st RICH Europe Symposium on Research Infrastructures

The Institute of Health Carlos III hosted the first RICH Europe Symposium on Research Infrastructures in Madrid, Spain, on May 7th. The symposium focused on integrating and developing open science within European research infrastructures (RIs) through a series of presentations and discussions held in three sessions. It also showcased relevant funded projects and promoted a global dialogue on research infrastructures.

Inmaculada Figueroa, Vice Director General for Internationalization of Science and Innovation, General Secretariat for Research, member of the EOSC Steering Board, and Spanish Ministry delegate to the LifeWatch ERIC ERIC General Assembly, opened the first session. Participants discussed how research infrastructures can benefit from EOSC to implement Open Science. The governance and strategic development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) also was discussed, as well as specific Horizon Europe projects that have contributed to this development, such as AI4EOSC and Skills4EOSC.

The second session of the RICH Europe Symposium shifted the discussion towards practical applications of open science practices within research infrastructure frameworks, including challenges in creating a digitally skilled workforce and fostering a web of FAIR data. The third and final session explored the role of research infrastructures in supporting Europe’s green and digital transition, detailing specific EU projects and their contributions to sustainability, broader access, and advanced research capabilities. Each session included a time for questions, answers, and debates, encouraging interactive participation from attendees.

To learn more about the Symposium, please visit this page: https://rich-europe.eu/events/1st-symposium-of-research-infrastructures/

LifeWatch ERIC at the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting 2023

The British Ecological Society Annual Meeting from 12-15 2023 December in Belfast offered LifeWatch ERIC the perfect opportunity to raise awareness of the infrastructure’s cloud-based and free data management facilities and many chances to network and understand what tools and services biodiversity and ecosystem researchers most want. The British Ecological Society is the oldest association for ecologists and the largest in Europe, boasting more than 7,500 members worldwide. 

Eight researchers from LifeWatch ERIC, the Italian National Research Council and the University of Salento presented their work on biodiversity loss, climate change and invasive alien species. Angela Carluccio and Alexandra Nicoleta Muresan gave oral presentations online. Daniel Crespo, Cristina Di Muri, Lucia Fanini, Vanessa Marrocco, Justine Pagnier and Jessica Titocci attended the whole conference and actively directed participants to the LifeWatch ERIC stand in the main hall, helping maintain a presence, answering enquiries and distributing branded merchandise. An online survey canvassing researchers’ data requirements was particularly popular.

Plenary presentations by Isabella Tree (author of ‘Wilding’), Stuart Davies (ForestGEO) and Jane Stout (Trinity College Dublin) provided worrying updates on the complex challenges facing planet Earth but also offered glimmers of hope in that Ecology has demonstrated its central role in governance and policy at all levels.

LifeWatch ERIC’s sponsorship of the Poster Sessions captured the attention of many of the 1300 ecologists present, and Chief Executive Officer Christos Arvanitidis and Service Center Director Alberto Basset contributed enthusiastically to answering enquiries about the rapidly evolving tools and services to accelerate and extend the scales of biodiversity and ecosystem research.

LifeWatch ERIC at EGU 2024: Fostering Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing in Environmental Research

EGU 2024

LifeWatch ERIC, in collaboration with EGI and other ENVRI Research Infrastructures, has organised two sessions in the upcoming European Geosciences Union 2024 (EGU) conference in Vienna from April 14-19, 2024.

Call for abstract: tell us how Research Infrastructures helped with your research

The first session will bring together researchers in environment and climate to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing. Researchers come from the atmosphere, marine, biodiversity, ecosystems, and solid earth domains. Besides, it involves data product developers, data scientists, and -engineers.

The session aims to share insights and real-world examples of Research Infrastructure that helped research or scientific development projects. If you:

  • used data analytics and visualisation to make data-driven discoveries;
  • demonstrated data collection and quality control expertise;
  • utilised infrastructures and cloud services to expedite your research;

Or overcome data access challenges, we want to hear about your experience. Contribute to the discussion on how Research Infrastructures contribute to doing science! You can participate in the session by submitting abstracts for oral or poster presentations. For more information, please visit this page. Please submit your contribution by 10 January 2024 at 13.00 CET.

A deep dive into data integration, Virtual Research Environments and more.

In the second session, we will conduct a training course that brings together environmental researchers, data developers, scientists, and engineers. This course provides practical and hands-on opportunities to enhance your understanding of data integration, Virtual Research Environments (VREs), web services, and their significance in environmental science. The course will also address the challenges faced while customising and running data workflows on the cloud using Jupyter Notebooks, which are time-consuming and complex processes. Participants will learn about the key technologies for notebook containerisation, workflow composition, and cloud automation in a Jupyter notebook-based VRE. We will also guide attendees to explore science cases in ecology and biodiversity virtual labs, making it a comprehensive and practical learning experience.

LifeWatch-ERIC, LALINET and ACTRIS-ERIC bridging meeting: towards a new future in Earth-atmosphere interactions research 

LifeWatch ERIC meeting in Granada

In the context of the SmartEcoMountains project, which aims to create a Thematic Centre to expand the knowledge on the functioning of Sierra Nevada ecosystems in global change scenarios, LifeWatch ERIC held a meeting with LALINET (Latin American Lidar NETwork) and ACTRIS (Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research Infrastructure Network) to foster collaboration in the future. The meeting took place in Granada from October 17 to 20, to exchange and transfer knowledge to identify future collaborative opportunities among these three entities.

Researchers from various Latin American countries, including Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil, attended the meeting to collaborate and design joint actions to understand better Earth-Atmosphere interactions using lidar techniques.

On the first day of the meeting, each network showcased its infrastructures, capabilities, needs, and interests for future collaborations. A major topic of discussion was vertical signal data processing. ACTRIS-ERIC presented their Centre for Aerosol Remote Sensing (CARS) and other tools that sparked interest in exploring future implementations for lidar data processing. Two distinct processing tools for atmospheric profiling were introduced, such as the Lidar Processing Pipeline (LPP), an open-source lidar signal analysis software developed in Latin America. 

The participants also engaged in a lively discussion on including Artificial Intelligence within the vertical profiling data processing framework, recognising its potential to enhance these processes. LifeWatch-ERIC offered valuable resources to enrich the collaboration, including blockchain for data traceability to ensure transparency and security and to develop cutting-edge virtual research environments (VREs) to support research and management of the infrastructures. 

The meeting explored possibilities for applying to joint proposals on European calls, such as Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions: Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) and other possible international cooperation programmes.

Global Dimension and Sustainability of Research Infrastructure

Global Dimension and Sustainability of Research Infrastructure

Under the Spanish presidency of the European Union, the high-level conference “Global Dimension and Sustainability of Research Infrastructure” was held on the island of Tenerife on 25-26 September 2023. LifeWatch ERIC Chief Executive Officer Christos Arvanitidis was among the dignitaries present in person, and the events of the two days were all available in streaming. 

The event was inaugurated on Monday afternoon by Rafael Rebolo López, Director of the Instituto di Astrofisica de Canarias (which hosted the event); Radka Wildovà, Director General for Higher Education, Science and Research, Czech Republic; Martin Balbackewski, adviser to the vice-president of Wallonia; Ana Arana Antelo, from the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation; and Gonzalo Arévalo, from the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation.

Collaboration and the creation of synergies between such various players will contribute much to understanding what the sustainability challenges – including resilience and financial factors – are likely to be in the coming years, while discussion of the global dimensions of European Research Infrastructures demonstrated how much the European Commission’s policies have already contributed to Open Science worldwide. 

The international nature of discussions was also reflected in the topics addressed in the opening session of the second day of the Global Dimension and Sustainability of Research Infrastructure conference: ‘The sky needs to be protected’, ‘Energy crisis’, Environmental footprint of Research Infrastructures in the polar regions’, ‘Greening of Research Infrastructures’, and ‘Best practice exchange in remote access’. A statement is expected to be issued at the conclusion of the conference on International cooperation between Research Infrastructures in a changing context. See the website for more details.