Expertise
The VIB Data Core is a new initiative that will offer hardware, software, and data-related services for non-sensitive and sensitive data to scientists of the Research Centers. More specifically, the Core strives to increase the quality, standardisation, reproducibility, and efficiency across the data life cycle - from project planning and data acquisition to knowledge generation, and publication and archiving of the research data according to FAIR principles.
The VIB Data Core works closely together with experts from the ELIXIR consortium, a European research infrastructure that unites Europe’s leading life-science organisations. The core team of the Belgian ELIXIR Node, which is embedded in the Core, has been active in providing platforms and guidance for research data management and reproducible data analysis.
Data Center
The Data Center Team will provide the hardware and infrastructure services needed to offer high quality, performant and reliable services to the VIB researchers. We will work closely with the Flemish Supercomputer Center (VSC) and the partner universities to provide an integrated infrastructure. We aim to complement the current offering tailored to the specific needs of life science researchers.
Data management
The Data Management Team will streamline the research data flows in VIB, across the Research Centers and Core Facilities. The team will support VIB researchers with guidelines, best practices, and platforms to perform Open and FAIR science. This will be achieved in close collaboration with the VIB Research Centers and Core Facilities, as well as the ELIXIR community.
This entails the implementation of a (meta)data platform, enabling the application of data policies based on (inter)national (meta)data standards that will allow data sharing and publishing according to the community's best practices. We will also deploy an Electronic Notebook platform for all VIB researchers. To support our researchers, we will establish a community of data stewards across the VIB Research Centers and Core Facilities and collaborate with the VIB Technology Training Unit to develop a training portfolio for research data management.
Data Analysis
The Data Analysis team will implement and deploy software tools, platforms, and workflows, enabling reproducible data analysis for the VIB Research Centers and Core Facilities. We will establish a portfolio of analysis services for VIB use cases, in close collaboration with infrastructure providers: the Data Center team of the VIB Data Core and the Flemish Supercomputer Center (VSC). The goal is to enable state-of-the-art computational research through high-quality services for the diverse stakeholders within VIB: from wet-lab researchers to bioinformaticians and research software engineers.
The data analysis team will also coordinate community building of bioinformaticians and research software developers across the VIB Research Centers and Core Facilities. In collaboration with the VIB Technology Training Unit, a training portfolio will be further developed to improve the reproducibility of data analyses, and the quality and sustainability of the developed tools and resources.
