NFDI4Life Umbrella brings together research communities across the life sciences domain in the context of the planned National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), following the recommendations given by the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII). Responding to the increasing scientific and societal demand for data and data analysis, NFDI4Life Umbrella connects scientific communities and research data infrastructures broadly covering the life sciences with particular focus on the subdomains biology, medicine (with veterinary medicine), epidemiology, nutrition, agricultural and environmental science as well as biodiversity research.
NFDI4Life Umbrella is the coordinative council for the currently proposed discipline specific life science consortia (NFDI4Agri, NFDI4BioDiversity, NFDI4Health, NFDI4Microbiota, NFDI4NutEpi).
NFDI4Life Umbrella addresses overarching research data management requirements in the life sciences with all its domains. NFDI4Life Umbrella focuses on the needs specific for the life sciences, but superordinate and cross-domain, such as overarching standards, methods and legal frameworks. In a life science umbrella concept, networking in the life science community as a whole and policies can be better targeted and organized than addressed in all life science specific NFDI consortia separately.
Structure NFDI4Life Umbrella
Who is NFDI4Life Umbrella?
Currently the consortium comprises university-, Leibniz-, Fraunhofer-, Max-Planck- as well as departmental research (“Ressortforschung”) and infrastructure facilities, and is thus well integrated within the German science system. NDFI4Life Umbrella consists of over 20 research institutions and information infrastructures mainly dedicated to the life science subdomains. Some of the partners are representatives of the single consortia delineated on the page Involved Consortia.
What are the key objectives of NFDI4Life Umbrella?
NFDI4Life Umbrella is a consolidated and strong voice of the German life science communities in national, European and international debates on policies, regulations or standards. It opens up international resources for German researchers and makes German research internationally more visible.
Its key objectives are:
- Ensuring implementation FAIR data standards across life science domain consortia
- Standardization of cross domain used data formats and processes, especially metadata
- Concerted education and training
- Organ to politics, funders, GoFAIR, Research Data Alliance or European Science Cloud EOSC
For more information about NFDI4Life please download the following position paper:
Download Position Paper (November 09, 2018)