NFDI-MatWerk Spring School 2026 in Erlangen – Research Data Management in Materials Science and Engineering
Why is it important?
Enabling a consistent and unobstructed standardization of research data will lead to substantial improvements in efficiency and synergies/collaboration among individual researchers and well-designed IT systems. In the era of digital infrastructures, this measure holds paramount importance in shaping the future of research. For the data to be sustainable and reusable, it must adhere to the “FAIR Data Principles”, meaning it should be “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable”.
The FAIR principles will be a cornerstone of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) implementation. Nowadays, Data Management Plans (DMPs) have become a requirement for project applications in Horizon Europe and are increasingly being demanded by various funding organizations, including the German Science Foundation (DFG), among others.
The Summer School is coorganized by the NFDI-consortiums (National Research Data Infrastructure) NFDI-MatWerk and FAIRmat. NFDI-MatWerk focuses on the research area Materials Science & Materials Engineering (MSE). The central challenge is the digital representation of materials and their relevant process and load parameters. FAIRmat has the mission to develop FAIR data infrastructure for materials data with built-in tools and standards to support scientific collaboration and proper research data management (RDM) practices targeting the wider field of condensed-matter physics and the chemical physics of solids.
NFDI-MatWerk and FAIRmat will provide in this summer school tailored information and solutions for dealing with research data specific for the the mentioned fields.
Who can apply?
Advanced Master Students, PhD-students and Post-Docs working in experimental and/or modeling/simulation in any field of materials science and engineering, condensed-matter physics, solid state chemistry and related disciplines (with or without experience in RDM).
The Spring School will take place:
📅 From 13th to 16th April, 2026
📍 At Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen
Registration deadline: March 1st, 2026
Please keep in mind that the number of participants is limited.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Introduction to Research Data Management (RDM)
- Data Structuring
- Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELN)
- Coscine: Research Data Management Platform
- NFDI-MatWerk: What is it and how to be part of it?
- Introduction to FAIRmat
Advanced Master Students, PhD-students and Post-Docs working in experimental and/or modeling/simulation in any field of physics of condensed matters, solid state chemistry, materials science, materials engineering and related disciplines (with or without experience in RDM), maximum 20 places will be available. Basic knowledge of programming, for instance in Python, MatLab or similar programing languages would be beneficial.
Participants should bring their own laptop. Please install a python environment on your computer, for instance: Miniconda, PyCharm, Jupyter or at least ipython. It is required in some lectures!
Monday, April 13th
13:00 – 13:30 Welcome and introduction to the event, the team and the participants
13:30 – 14:30 Introduction to RDM
14:30 – 15:00 Break
15:00 – 15:30 Introduction to MatWerk
15:30 – 16:00 Introduction to FAIRmat
16:00 – 17:30 Data Structuring
19:00 – Dinner (tbc)
Tuesday, April 14th
09:00 – 10:00 Introduction to ELN
10:00 – 10:30 Break
10:30 – 12:00 ELN
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 – 13:30 Cosine
13:30 – 15:30 Getting Started NOMAD
15:30 – 17:00 Slot 7 (tbd)
17:00 – 17:30 tbd
17:30 – 18:00 tbd
18:00 – 20:00 Dinner (tbc)
Wednesday, April 15th
09:00 – 09:30 Slot 9
09:30 – 10:00 Break
10:00 – 12:00 Hands-on
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 – 14:00 CAMELS
14:00 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 15:30 Slot 11 (tbd)
15:30 – 17:30 Slot 12 (tbd)
Thursday, April 16th
09:00 – 10:00 AI-Ready Data and Machine Learning 1
10:00 – 10:30 Break
10:30 – 12:00 AI-Ready Data and Machine Learning 2
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch break & End of Event
- Michael Krieger – Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
- Alex Fuchs – Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
- Hampus Näsström
- Martin Kuban – HU-Berlin
- Katharina Grunwald – RWTH Aachen University, IT Center
- Steffen Brinkmann – Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University
- Luca Ghiringhelli – Karlsruher Institut für Technologie and FAU
Organisation:
- Luca Ghiringhelli (luca.ghiringhelli@fau.de) – Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
- Ahmed Mansour (amansour@physik.hu-berlin.de) – Humboldt Universität Berlin
- Pranav Nayak (pranav.nayak@uni-saarland.de) – Universität des Saarlandes
- Flavio Soldera (f.soldera@matsci.uni-sb.de) – Universität des Saarlandes, EUSMAT
Friedrich-Alexander-University
Erlangen-Nuremberg
Erlangen, Germany
Accommodation is not included in the registration.
Erlangen offers a wide range of hotel rooms in various price categories. Participants are free to choose their accommodation, and we kindly ask you to make all bookings directly with the hotel.
Most hotel reservations require a valid credit card in order to guarantee the booking. We advise you also to check the cancellation terms with the hotel at the time of booking / reserving the accommodation.
Recommendations
Please keep in mind that the number of participants is limited.
Registration deadline: March 1st, 2026
NFDI-MatWerk Spring School 2026
IMPORTANT!
The participation is free of charge.
The event will take place in English.
In case of further inquiries please contact: office@eusmat.net
Partners
EUSMAT – European School of Materials, Universität des Saarlandes
Institute of Materials Simulation (WW8), University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
