Empowering the Next Generation: Highlights from the 2nd DAPHNE Vision Workshop

On July 15, 2026, the DAPHNE4NFDI Vision network for young scientists successfully hosted its second workshop – this time exclusively online. The workshop was organized by Christian Trageser and started with a warm welcome by the DAPHNE4NFDI speaker Bridget Murphy and co-speaker Astrid Schneidewind. The event also marked a major milestone: the official transition of leadership. Six enthusiastic volunteers stepped forward to form the new DAPHNE Vision Representatives team, which was unanimously approved by all attendees. This newly established group will soon elect a primary and secondary spokesperson to act as main points of contact and will meet with the former organizing team in the coming weeks for a smooth handover and sucessful continuation.

Knowledge Management and Transfer in RDM

The scientific program kicked off with an engaging roundtable discussion led by Melike Karasu Konerding (University of Wuppertal). To actively steer the session, she utilized a live, anonymous polling app, allowing participants to share their past experiences honestly. The discussion addressed the common issue that Research Data Management (RDM) is frequently skimmed over in physics lectures, leaving early-career scientists feeling overwhelmed or lacking onboarding standards.

The interactive brainstorming resulted in a structured document outlining concrete strategies. Key recommendations included:

  • Establishing group-internal wikis and repositories via GitHub/GitLab.

  • Utilizing Electronic Logbooks (ELNs) and scientific metadata catalogues like SciCat.

  • Creating student RDM representatives within research groups to bridge communication gaps with supervisors.

The participants also highlighted academic standard issues, noting that FAIR data efforts are not sufficiently incentivized and that software publications should be better recognized in scientific KPIs.

AI Applications in Medical Imaging

Next, Hafiz Muhammad Fahad (LMU) presented "AI applications in medical imaging". Following a brief theoretical introduction to the fundamentals and strict requirements of AI in the medical field, attendees jumped into a hands-on JupyterHub notebook demo. This practical session allowed participants to interact directly with a complete software example. The coding session sparked great enthusiasm and immediate synergies, as participants working on similar imaging projects eagerly exchanged questions and shared technical solutions regarding implementation.

 

Catalysis Metadata Organizer: Towards FAIR Data

The final session, presented by Andrey Sapronov (IKFT/ITCP, KIT), introduced the "Catalysis metadata organizer" (CatOrga), a tool founded within the ROCK-IT project. He explained the immense challenges of catalysis RDM, where catalyst samples, synthesis procedures, and testing methodologies possess a massive variety of defining properties that lack automated metadata generation.

To tackle this, the CatOrga framework extends SciCat with a dedicated catalysis add-on. It uses modular, flat schemas that can be managed via simple CSV/Excel files to lower the entry threshold for scientists. A key highlight was the "no-form approach," which utilizes LLMs in a structured output mode to extract metadata automatically from pre-existing text descriptions (like emails or proposals). During a live web-demo using a sandbox installation, participants tested the system with sample data, experiencing firsthand how the tool reduces ambiguity and improves reproducibility.

 

Looking Ahead: A Strong Wish for Face-to-Face

During the concluding feedback and Q&A session, a strong collective desire emerged for future workshops to return to a face-to-face format again to enhance networking. The organizing team highly supports this wish to strengthen the community and hopes the newly confirmed DAPHNE4NFDI Vision representatives will bring it to life in the next event. Ultimately, the workshop successfully established a dedicated leadership team, sparked valuable collaborative synergies, and deepened everyone's practical RDM skills.