EOSC Symposium 2026

14 Oct 2026, 11:00 → 16 Oct 2026, 16:15 Europe/Zurich

Palazzo dei Congressi, Florence

The EOSC Symposium 2026 will demonstrate the unique value that EOSC brings to the Union’s research and innovation programme, with the EOSC Federation taking centre stage.

Launched at last year’s Symposium as “the backbone of Europe’s digital research and innovation ecosystem,” the EOSC Federation is rapidly expanding and maturing into a new strategic asset for Europe’s research, innovation, and digital sovereignty agendas. This year’s event will mark its formal transition into operations.

Organised by the EOSC Association with the support of the EOSC Gravity project, the EOSC Symposium 2026 will take place in-person in Florence on 14–16 October at the Palazzo dei Congressi.

This flagship event is the must-attend gathering for everyone driving the future of Europe’s research data ecosystem—from policymakers and funders to researchers, infrastructure leaders, data stewards, and more. Over three days, participants will connect, share insights, and celebrate the latest progress concerning EOSC and the EOSC Federation.

EOSC Symposium 2026

Wednesday 14 October

11:00 → 18:30 Registration desk opens

12:30 → 13:30 Light Welcome Lunch

13:30 → 14:00 Opening Welcome

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists Bio - Klaus Tochtermann.pdf

13:30 Speaker: Klaus Tochtermann, President, EOSC Association and Director, ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

13:40 Speaker: Anna Maria Bernini, Italian Minister of University and Research

13:45 Speaker: Gianluigi Consoli, Director General for Internationalisation, Italian Ministry of University and Research

13:55 Speaker: Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation

14:00 → 15:15 Opening Session

Objectives:
- Set the strategic context for the future of European research and innovation by exploring how Framework Programme 10 can strengthen Europe's competitiveness, maximise the impact of research investments, and accelerate the uptake of digital research infrastructures.
- Discuss the actions needed to reinforce Europe's digital sovereignty and research resilience, highlighting the role of EOSC as a key enabler of an integrated, data-driven, and globally competitive European Research Area.

Chair:
Shalini Kurapati, Co-founder and CEO, Clearbox AI

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Antonio Zoccoli.pdf
• Bio - Daniel Wójcik .pdf
• Bio - Shalini Kurapati.pdf

14:00 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Shalini Kurapati, Co-founder and CEO, Clearbox AI

14:05 Keynote

Speaker: Manuel Heitor, Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and main author of Align, Act, Accelerate Report

14:35 Panel Discussion on Digital Sovereignty and Research Resilience

Chair:
Shalini Kurapati, Co-founder and CEO, Clearbox AI

Panelists:
Manuel Heitor, Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and main author of Align, Act, Accelerate Report
Antonio Zoccoli, President, National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and President, Italian Research Center on High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing (ICSC)
Daniel Wójcik, Head of the Laboratory of Neuroinformatics, Nencki Institute for Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

15:15 → 16:00 EOSC Tripartite Governance: Results to Date and Future Directions

Objectives:
- Review the key achievements and outcomes delivered by the EOSC Tripartite Governance, highlighting the progress towards the realisation of EOSC.
- Discuss future priorities, challenges, and opportunities for the EOSC Partnership

Chair:
Sara Garavelli (Director, EOSC Association and Development Manager, CSC - IT Center for Science)

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Aneta Pazik-Aybar.pdf
• Bio - Klaus Tochtermann.pdf
• Bio - Sara Garavelli.pdf

15:15 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Sara Garavelli, Director, EOSC Association and Development Manager, CSC - IT Center for Science

15:20 European Commission

Speaker: Jean-David Malo, Acting Director for ERA & Innovation, DG Research and Innovation (DG RTD), European Commission

15:30 EOSC Steering Board

Speaker: Aneta Pazik-Aybar, Co-Chair, EOSC Steering Board; Coordinator of the Polish EOSC Node; Head of Open Science Team at the National Science Centre Poland (NCN)

15:40 EOSC Association

Speaker: Klaus Tochtermann, EOSC Association President and Director of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Center for Economics

15:50 Q&A

16:00 → 16:45 Networking Coffee Break

16:45 → 17:30 EOSC Federation: State of play

Objectives:
- Provide an update on the implementation of the EOSC Federation during its first year, highlighting key achievements, milestones, and collaborative efforts across the EOSC community
- Present the latest developments of the EOSC EU Node, including recent releases and enhancements, and discuss their role in advancing the EOSC Federation

Chair:
Sara Garavelli (Director, EOSC Association and Development Manager, CSC - IT Center for Science)

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Bob Jones.pdf
• Bio - Peter Szegedi .pdf
• Bio - Sara Garavelli.pdf

16:45 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Sara Garavelli, Director, EOSC Association and Development Manager, CSC - IT Center for Science

16:50 One Year of the EOSC Federation: What we’ve built together

Speaker: Bob Jones, Special Envoy of the EOSC Association for the EOSC Federation

17:05 EOSC EU Node: Recent releases and Updates

Speaker: Peter Szegedi, Policy Officer at DG-CONNECT C.1 and EEN Service Owner, European Commission

17:15 Q&A

Chair: Sara Garavelli, EOSC Association and CSC - IT Center for Science

17:30 → 18:30 Lightning talks

Chair:
Roberto Sabatino (EOSC Steering Board and Research Engagement Officer, Asiera)

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Francisco Rey Garduño.pdf
• Bio - Jan Krasni .pdf
• Bio - Katja Gilly.pdf
• Bio - Marco Molinaro.pdf
• Bio - Phil Reed.pdf
• Bio - Rafał Bartczuk.pdf
• Bio - Roberto Sabatino.pdf
• Bio - Valentina Pasquale.pdf
• Bio - Wim Hugo.pdf

17:30 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Roberto Sabatino, EOSC Steering Board and Research Engagement Officer, Asiera

17:32 Paediatric Health Data in EOSC: From Federation to AI

Speaker: Rafał Bartczuk, European Paediatric Translational Research Infrastructure

17:39 From Hospital Data to the EOSC Federation with Simpl

Speaker: Francisco Rey Garduño, Institute of Biomedicine of Seville and European Federation for Medical Informatics

17:46 Federation in Practice: From FAIR Data to Distributed AI

Speaker: Katja Gilly, Miguel Hernández University

17:53 OpenREL: machine-actionable policies and licences for EOSC

Speaker: Wim Hugo, DANS

18:00 From Genomes to Hate Archives: Sovereign Compute-to-Data

Speaker: Jan Krasni, Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA), Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin)

18:07 Astrophysics Astroparticle Space Sciences Thematic EOSC Node

Speaker: Marco Molinaro, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)

18:14 CORAL-Collaborative Research Application Layer for FAIR data

Speaker: Valentina Pasquale, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

18:21 TeSSHub4EOSC: FAIR training catalogue infrastructure

Speaker: Phil Reed, University of Manchester

18:28 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Roberto Sabatino, EOSC Steering Board and Research Engagement Officer, Asiera

Thursday 15 October

09:00 → 09:45 Sustainability, Community and Security: Research Data Infrastructure in the Age of AI

Chair:
Michael Arentoft, Head of Unit, Open Science and Research Infrastructures, DG Research and Innovation (DG RTD), European Commission

Speaker:
Rosie Hicks, Chief Executive of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists Bio - Michael Arentoft .pdf

09:45 → 11:00 EOSC EU Node: Advancing the federation through interoperability and integration with other EU flagships

The EOSC EU Node (EEN) continues to evolve with new releases for both end-users and contributors designed to simplify day-to-day research workflows and support the development of the EOSC Federation. The latest updates introduce new service features and capabilities for researchers using the platform. They also provide eligible organisations with tools and services for onboarding their offerings to the EOSC EU Node, as well as support the EOSC Node candidates with their enrolment workflow through dedicated node registration services.

The session will highlight the progress of the latest interoperability and integration pilots with EU data spaces and other flagship technology infrastructures. The cross-data space workflows between EEN and the Destination Earth (DestinE) platform - leveraging the SIMPL protocol stack of the EC - will be illustrated. The end-user benefits of federated technology platform interactions between EEN and the EuroHPC Federation Platform (EFP) will be demonstrated and showcased via practical use cases. Together, these improvements strengthen the EOSC EU Node as a gateway for accessing services, managing resources, supporting collaboration, and contributing to a more connected European Open Science ecosystem.

Chair:
Peter Szegedi (Policy Officer at DG-CONNECT C.1 and EEN Service Owner, European Commission)

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio -Arian Artman.pdf
• Bio - Lilit Axner.pdf
• Bio - Peter Szegedi .pdf
• Bio - Spiros Athanasiou.pdf
• Bio - Thanassis Karmas .pdf

09:45 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Peter Szegedi, Policy Officer at DG-CONNECT C.1 and EEN Service Owner, European Commission

09:50 EuroHPC Federation Platform (EFP)

Speaker: Lilit Axner, EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, Pekka Lehtovuori, Director, CSC - IT Center for Science

10:10 Simpl-Open for Interoperable EU Data Spaces

Speaker: Arian Artman, Simpl Contractor, NTT Data

10:25 EOSC EU Node support for Federated EU Platforms

Speaker: Thanassis Karmas, Chief Architect & Operations Lead and EEN Contractor, Athena Research Center (ATHENA RC)

10:40 The first two years of the EOSC EU Node

Speaker: Spiros Athanasiou, Project Manager & Scientific Associate and EEN Account Executive, Athena Research Center (ATHENA RC)

09:45 → 11:00 Data federation, trustworthiness and sovereignty

Chairs:
Klaus Tochtermann (President, EOSC Association and Director, ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics);
Mari Kleemola (Development Manager and Deputy Director, Finnish Social Science Data Archive,Tampere University)

Objectives:
– Showcase practical approaches to data federation and data sovereignty through real-world use cases, identifying remaining barriers
– Identify common challenges, barriers, and requirements for integrating trustworthy repositories into the EOSC Federation

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Ana-Claudia Sima.pdf
• Bio - Andy Götz.pdf
• Bio - Bob Jones.pdf
• Bio - Elli Papadopoulou .pdf
• Bio - Klaus Tochtermann.pdf
• Bio - Mari Kleemola.pdf

09:45 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Klaus Tochtermann, President, EOSC Association and Director, ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

09:48 Impulse Statement – The Federation of Nodes and the requirements for repositories to become a Node themselves or onboard their services onto a Node

Speaker: Bob Jones, Special Envoy of the EOSC Association for the EOSC Federation and Project Coordinator, CERN

09:58 Impulse Statement – Outcomes of a survey among repositories on their “EOSC readiness”

Speaker: Elli Papadopoulou, Research Associate, Athena Research Center (Athena RC)

10:08 Panel Discussion

Chair: Klaus Tochtermann, EOSC Association and ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Panelists:
Bob Jones, EOSC Association and CERN;
Elli Papadopoulou, Athena Research Center;
Mari Kleemola, Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD), Tampere University;
Andy Götz, EOSC Association and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF);
Ana-Claudia Sima, Co-Team Lead, Knowledge Representation Unit, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB)

10:58 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Klaus Tochtermann, President, EOSC Association and Director, ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

09:45 → 11:00 EOSC Federation Nodes in production: Lessons learnt and next steps

Chairs:
Roberto Sabatino (EOSC Steering Board and Research Engagement Officer, Asiera);
Annika Glauner (Senior Science Policy & Strategy Advisor, ETH Zürich and Swiss EOSC Node)

Objectives:
– The session answers the following questions: How to build an EOSC node (technical / governance/ legal aspects)? How to engage resource providers and users? How to sustain a node?

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Alessandro Petrocelli.pdf
• Bio - Annika Glauner.pdf
• Bio - Jessica Parland-von Essen.pdf
• Bio - Luděk Matyska.pdf
• Bio - Pasquale Pagano.pdf
• Bio - Peter Maccallum.pdf
• Bio - Roberto Sabatino.pdf

09:45 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Roberto Sabatino, Research Engagement Officer, Asiera and EOSC Steering Board

09:50 Talks from EOSC nodes part of the build-up phase

10:40 Interactive discussion

Chair: Annika Glauner, Senior Research Strategy and Research Policy Officer, ETH Zürich and Swiss EOSC Node

11:00 → 11:45 Networking Coffee Break

11:45 → 13:00 Capacity building on using AI tools for data science

Chairs:
Álvaro López García (Head of Advanced Computing and e-Science Group at the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC));
Kamran Naim (Director, EOSC Association and Head of Open Science, CERN);
Oliver Knodel (Head of Group Data Management and HPC, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR));
Roxanne Wyns (Director, EOSC Association and Innovation Manager, KU Leuven Libraries)

Objectives:
– Identify the key components required for an EOSC-wide AI skills ecosystem, including training, repositories, infrastructure services, and community support mechanisms.
– Explore how EOSC Nodes, INFRAEOSC projects, research infrastructures, and capacity-building initiatives can collaborate to support AI-enabled research and avoid fragmentation of effort across Europe.

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Alvaro Lopez Garcia.pdf
• Bio - Kamran Naim.pdf
• Bio - Karina Rodriguez Echavarria.pdf
• Bio - Martin Golasowski.pdf
• Bio - Oliver Knodel .pdf
• Bio - Roxanne Wyns .pdf

11:45 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Álvaro López García, Head of Advanced Computing and e-Science Group at the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

11:55 Lightning perspectives

12:10 Panel discussion

Moderator:
Álvaro López García, Head of Advanced Computing and e-Science Group at the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

Panelists:
Martin Golasowski, Senior researcher, IT4 Innovations National Superc omputing Center (IT4I) , VŠB–Technical University of Ostrava
Oliver Knodel, Head of Group Data Management and HPC, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR)
Karina Rodriguez Echavarria, Professor of Visual Computing,
College of Creativity, Technology and Society at University of Brighton

12:40 Audience discussion

Moderator: Álvaro López García, Head of Advanced Computing and e-Science Group at the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

12:55 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Álvaro López García, Head of Advanced Computing and e-Science Group at the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

11:45 → 13:00 Usage of EOSC Nodes and related benefits

Chairs:
Aneta Pazik-Aybar (Co-Chair, EOSC Steering Board; Head of Open Science, National Science Centre Poland (NCN) and Coordinator, Polish EOSC Node);
Giovanni Guerrieri (Coordinator for Data Infrastructure for Open Science and VREs, CERN);
Jonathan Tedds (Senior Programme Manager for Scientific Computing, ELIXIR)

Objectives:
– Showcase concrete, multi-node use cases where researchers and providers solved, accelerated, or scaled a real scientific or operational problem using EOSC Nodes (including the EU Node) — making visible what already works across the Federation.
– Distill the benefits, recurring blockers, and requirements from real Node usage into actionable feedback for Node operators and the EOSC Federation.

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Aneta Pazik-Aybar.pdf
• Bio - Giovanni Guerrieri.pdf
• Bio - Jonathan Tedds.pdf
• Bio - Karl Presser.pdf
• Bio - Laurents Sesink.pdf
• Bio - Mariarita de Luca .pdf
• Bio - Valerio Piomponi.pdf

11:45 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Aneta Pazik-Aybar, EOSC Steering Board and National Science Centre Poland

11:50 FORGE: Federated Open Research Data for Genomics

Speaker: Federica Bazzocchi, Research Technologist, Area Science Park (AREA) and Valerio Piomponi, Research Technologist, Area Science Park (AREA)

12:00 METROFOOD: Cross-node Catalogue Federation

Speaker: Karl Presser, Managing Partner, Premotec GmbH (PMT)

12:10 Leveraging Scarce EU Node Resources & Digital Sovereignty

Speaker: Laurents Sesink, Program Manager, SURF

12:20 Federated Workflows Using Galaxy

Speaker: Wolfgang Maier, Researcher, University of Freiburg

12:30 Moderated Discussion and Q&A

Chair: Jonathan Tedds, ELIXIR

Panelists:
Mariarita de Luca, Area Science Park
Karl Presser, Premotec GmbH
Laurents Sesink, SURF
Wolfgang Maier, University of Freiburg

12:55 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Giovanni Guerrieri, CERN

11:45 → 13:00 EOSC Federation IF, architecture and data-related policies

Chairs:
Matteo Zanaroli (Ethics and Data Governance Manager, Italian National Research Centre on High-Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing (ICSC) and Coordinator, Italian EOSC Node);
Peter MacCallum (Chief Technical Officer, ELIXIR and Coordinator, Life Sciences Connect EOSC Node)

Objectives:
– This session will present the current state of the art of the EOSC Interoperability Framework (IF) and its overall architecture, offering a clear and practical overview of how EOSC nodes are designed and operated today.
– Examination of the key technical, governance, and legal components required to build robust and compliant nodes in practice, while also reflecting on the gaps and needs that should be addressed in the future development of the EOSC Federation. 
– A specific focus will be on enabling the sharing of high-quality research data and metadata, including the adoption of FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), provenance information, and other practices that support trust, discoverability, interoperability, and reuse across the EOSC ecosystem.
– Exploration of strategies to effectively engage both service/resource providers and user communities, while highlighting the differences that may arise across various types of nodes and levels of implementation.
– The session will also discuss sustainability and “business model” approaches to support the long-term impact, continuous evolution, and deeper integration of EOSC nodes within the EOSC Federation ecosystem.

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Christelle Pierkot.pdf
• Bio - Matteo Zanaroli.pdf
• Bio - Michal Med.pdf
• Bio - Peter Maccallum.pdf
• Bio - Roksana Wilk.pdf

11:45 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Peter MacCallum, ELIXIR and Life Sciences Connect EOSC Node

11:55 Semantic interoperability in the EOSC Federation​

Speaker: Michal Med, Interoperability Analyst, Czech Education and Scientific NETwork (CESNET), EOSC United

12:03 A DCAT 3 Catalog Model for Semantic Interoperability in EOSC. The example of the Data Terra Node Catalogue -

Speaker: Christelle Pierkot, Research Engineer and Deputy Node Coordinator, DataTerra EOSC Node

12:11 Practical aspects of the EOSC Interoperability Framework - EOSC PL journey

Speaker: Roksana Wilk, Technical Operation and Architecture Manager, Polish EOSC Node

12:19 What it takes to build an EOSC Node - The experience of the Italian Node

Speaker: Matteo Zanaroli, Coordinator, Italian EOSC Node

12:27 Panel and interactive discussion

Chair:
Peter MacCallum, ELIXIR and Life Sciences Connect EOSC Node

Panelists:
Michal Med, Interoperability Analyst, Czech Education and Scientific NETwork (CESNET), EOSC United;
Roksana Wilk, Technical Operation and Architecture Manager, Polish EOSC Node;
Christelle Pierkot, Research Engineer and Deputy Node Coordinator, DataTerra EOSC Node;
Matteo Zanaroli, Coordinator, Italian EOSC Node

12:55 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Peter MacCallum, ELIXIR and Life Sciences Connect EOSC Node

13:00 → 14:30 Networking Lunch

14:30 → 15:45 EOSC and ERICs/ESFRIs

Chairs:
Antje Keppler (Director, EOSC Association and Section Director, Euro-BioImaging ERIC);
Jan Hrušák (EOSC Steering Board and Senior Research Fellow, Heyrovský Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Objectives:
– Demonstrate how ERICs, ESFRIs, thematic EOSC Nodes, and emerging RI communities can contribute concrete, trusted, and interoperable services, and cross-disciplinary collaboration to the EOSC Federation.

– Identify practical gaps and future opportunities for EOSC regarding Node onboarding, user access, sensitive data, metadata, cross-node workflows, sustainability, and RI governance.

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Antje Keppler.pdf
• Bio - Fermín Serrano Sanz .pdf
• Bio - Jan Hrušák .pdf
• Bio - Marcus Povey.pdf
• Bio - Özlem Yalçın Seyhan.pdf
• Bio - Vojtěch Bystrý .pdf

14:30 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Antje Keppler, EOSC Association and Euro-BioImaging ERIC

14:35 Flash inputs from 1st wave Nodes, RIs and emerging communities

15:00 Panel discussion and audience interaction

Chair:
Antje Keppler, EOSC Association and Euro-BioImaging ERIC

Panelists:
Marcus Povey,Instruct-ERIC
Fermín Serrano, Fundación Ibercivis
Vojtěch Bystrý, Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University;
Özlem Yalçın Seyhan, Koç University Research Center for Translational Medicine, Koç University School of Medicine;

15:40 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Jan Hrušák, EOSC Steering Board and Heyrovský Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences

14:30 → 15:45 Automating data FAIRification

Chairs:
Erik Schultes (Co-founder, Go-FAIR foundation and Scientific Director, Partners in FAIR)
Giorgio Rossi (EOSC Steering Board and Professor, Università degli Studi di Milano)

Objectives:
– Provide an overview of the state of the art in the production of FAIR datasets (e.g. by research infrastructures) by either FAIR-by-design technologies or by ex-post FAIRification by algorithms and compute.
– Provide the outlook on how the necessary level of productivity (in the limit of all new data 100% FAIR) can be reached by the two methods, and/or their combination, from the perspectives of technology, economy, transferability of solutions.

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Alex Ioannidis .pdf
• Bio - Anca Hienola.pdf
• Bio - Erik Schultes.pdf
• Bio - Franciska de Jong.pdf
• Bio - Giorgio Rossi.pdf
• Bio - Stefano Cozzini.pdf
• Bio - Sylvia Le Dévédec .pdf

14:30 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Giorgio Rossi, EOSC Steering Board and Professor,Università degli Studi di Milano

14:35 FAIR by design at the bench: what it takes to produce FAIR (Bioimaging) data from the instrument-up

Speaker: Sylvia Le Dévédec, Associate Professor, Universiteit Leiden

14:50 FAIR from Creation to Curation: Technologies, Lab Upgrades and HPC Needs

Speaker: Stefano Cozzini, Director, AREA Science Park (AREA)

15:05 Use case: ENVRI EOSC Node

Speaker: Anca Hienola, Chief of Open Science, Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI)

15:10 Use case: FAIR at scale: From submission to reuse at Zenodo

Speaker: Alex Ioannidis, Zenodo Service Manager, CERN

15:15 Use case: Automation of FAIRification and the SSH cluster: how diversity can underline the power of service federation (CLARIN ERIC/SSHOC)

Speaker: Franciska de Jong, Senior Advisor, Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN ERIC)

15:20 Panel discussion

Chair:
Giorgio Rossi, EOSC Steering Board and Professor, Università degli Studi di Milano

Panelists:
Stefano Cozzini, AREA Science Park
Sylvia Le Dévédec, Universiteit Leiden
Anca Hienola, Finnish Meteorological Institute
Alex Loannidis, CERN
Franciska de Jong, Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure

15:40 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Giorgio Rossi, EOSC Steering Board and Professor,Università degli Studi di Milano

14:30 → 15:45 EOSC Federation federating capabilities

Chair:
Mario Reale (Technical Coordinator for the EOSC Federation, EOSC Association)

Objectives:
– Explain to the audience the current status of the mandatory federating capabilities and how they are expected to evolve during 2026-2027.
– The audience is expected to be contributors (nodes & resources) to the EOSC Federation.

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Aastha Mathur .pdf
• Bio - Kostas Koumantaros.pdf
• Bio - Mario Reale.pdf
• Bio - Matthew Viljoen .pdf
• Bio - Paolo Manghi.docx.pdf
• Bio - Pavel Weber.pdf

14:30 Introduction

Speaker: Aastha Mathur, Head of Image Data Services, Euro-BioImaging ERIC and Co-Chair, EOSC Node Operations Committee

14:40 Presentations

15:30 Q&A

Chair: Mario Reale, Technical Coordinator for the EOSC Federation, EOSC Association

15:45 → 16:30 Networking Coffee Break

16:30 → 17:45 EOSC and Data Spaces

Chairs:
Marialuisa Lavitrano (Vice-President, EOSC Association and Full Professor, Milano-Bicocca University);
Enrique Bernal-Delgado (Director, EOSC Association and Senior Scientist, Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences (IACS))

Objectives:
– Explore synergies between EOSC and European Data Spaces initiatives.
– Examine legal and regulatory considerations, with a focus on the European Health Data Space.
– Highlight practical experiences from sectoral data spaces, including health and cultural heritage.
– Assess the role of infrastructures such as SIMPL in supporting data space implementation. Identify opportunities for collaboration between research communities, policymakers, and data space stakeholders.

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Enrique Bernal-Delgado .pdf
• Bio - Irene Schlünder .pdf
• Bio - Juan González García.pdf
• Bio - Justin Ansotte.pdf
• Bio - Marialuisa Lavitrano .pdf
• Bio - Valeria Ardizzone .pdf
• Bio - Vania Virgili .pdf

16:30 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Marialuisa Lavitrano, Vice-President, EOSC Association and Full Professor, Milano-Bicocca University

16:40 Presentations

17:15 Panel discussion and audience interaction

Chairs:
Enrique Bernal-Delgado, Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences and EOSC Association Board;
Marialuisa Lavitrano, Milano-Bicocca University and EOSC Association Board

Panelists:
Irene Schluender,Technology and Methods Platform for Networked Medical Research e.V.
Juan González-García, Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences
Justin Ansotte, Engineering & AI Team Lead, Belgian Health Data Agency
Valeria Ardizzone, EGI Foundation
Vania Virgili, European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science

17:40 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Marialuisa Lavitrano, Vice-President, EOSC Association and Full Professor, Milano-Bicocca University

16:30 → 17:45 EOSC Federation User Forum: The voice of the research community

Chairs:
Andy Götz (Science Officer, EOSC Association and Manager, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF));
Sally Chambers (Director, Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH EU))

The true value of the EOSC Federation is in its uptake and use of the data, tools, services and workflows offered by the Nodes by a wider range of research communities. The EOSC Federation User Forum is intended to provide "a shared space where the EOSC Federation research community learns, asks, and grows together". This includes capturing user feedback on service quality, usability and FAIR data access to inform EOSC Federation development and priorities. It is a place for the voice of the research community to be heard.

The objectives of this session are:
– To raise awareness of the EOSC Federation User Forum as a shared space where the EOSC Federation research community learns, asks, and grows together as a community
– To understand what researchers need from the forum for it to serve as a platform to answer users’ questions, share solutions and experiences and help researchers find resources and FAIR data available in the Federation.

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists

• Bio - Andy Götz.pdf
• Bio - Heinrich Widmann .pdf
• Bio - Ingo Börner.pdf
• Bio - Sorina Camarasu-Pop .pdf
• Bio - Stephen Serjeant.pdf

16:30 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Andy Götz, EOSC Association and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

16:35 Introducing the EOSC Federation User Forum

Speaker: Andy Götz, EOSC Association and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

16:45 Experience and lessons learned building up the Virtual Imaging Platform

Speaker: Sorina Camarasu Pop, Research Engineer, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)

17:00 Voice of the Research Community

Chair: Sally Chambers, Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities

17:30 Interactive session with audience

Chair: Sally Chambers, Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities

16:30 → 17:45 Business models for the EOSC Federation

Chairs:
Javier Lopez Albacete (Policy Officer, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), European Commission);
Dale Robertson (EOSC Liaison Manager and Strategy and Innovation Team Lead, EGI Foundation);
Jan Meijer (Senior International Strategy Advisor, Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (Sikt))

Objectives:
– Explore mechanisms for the fair and efficient sharing of resources, services, and capabilities across independent organisations within distributed environments.
– Discuss the minimal operational, legal, technical, and organisational conditions required to enable scalable and sustainable resource sharing within the EOSC Federation

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists Bio - Ivan Marić .pdf Bio - Jan Meijer.pdf

16:30 Welcome and Introduction

Speakers: Dale Robertson, EGI Foundation and Jan Meijer, Sikt

16:35 Examples of business models in distributed environments

17:05 Panel Discussion

Chairs:
Dale Robertson, EGI Foundation
Jan Meijer, Sikt

Panelists:
Ornela De Giacomo, Central European Research Infrastructure Consortium
Ivan Maric, University of Zagreb University Computing Centre
Ivar Janmaat, SURF

17:40 Closing Remarks

Speakers: Dale Robertson, EGI Foundation and Jan Meijer, Sikt

19:30 → 00:00 Networking Dinner

Location: Sala delle Nazioni, Fortezza da Basso
Entrance: Viale Filippo Strozzi 1
Entrance gate: Porta Santa Maria Novella

Friday 16 October

09:30 → 10:15 AI Readiness: Towards Rigorous and Trustworthy AI in Science

Chair:
Florian Jug (Head of Computational Biology Research Centre – Multimodal AI Across Scales, Human Technopole)

Speaker:
Mercè Crosas, Director, Computational Social Science and Humanities (CSSH) Laboratory, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) & President of CODATA

10:15 → 11:00 Panel discussion on Powering AI for Science: How EOSC Can Strengthen Europe's AI Leadership

One year after the publication of the European Strategy for Artificial Intelligence in Science
(October 2025), Europe’s research community has a unique opportunity to place high-quality, trustworthy research data at the heart of discussions on AI for science.

The session will discuss how EOSC can help addressing the challenge of improving access to high-quality, trustworthy research data by enabling researchers across Europe to access, store, share, and reuse FAIR data through a federated, compliance-oriented infrastructure that balances openness with data sovereignty. By unlocking large, diverse, and machine-actionable FAIR datasets, EOSC directly supports AI development and helps overcome data scarcity, a key barrier to innovation in AI for science. Conversely, AI technologies can facilitate the automated processing of data provided by EOSC.

Chair:
Florian Jug (Head of Computational Biology Research Centre – Multimodal AI Across Scales, Human Technopole)

Panelists:
Mercè Crosas, Director, Computational Social Science and Humanities (CSSH) Laboratory, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) & President of CODATA
Pantelis Tziveloglou, Team Leader, Unit for Open Science and Research Infrastructures, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), European Commission
Wolfgang Zu Castell, Director and Chief Information Officer, GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences and Professor of Geodata Science at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Get to know chairs, speakers and panelists Bio - Wolfgang zu Castell.pdf

11:00 → 11:45 Networking Coffee Break

11:45 → 13:10 Closing Plenary: EOSC Federation: What´s next

Objectives:
- Present the next steps in the implementation and expansion of the EOSC Federation, including the integration of new EOSC Nodes and the evolution of the Federation's governance and operational framework
- Discuss strategic priorities and novelties for the next phase of the EOSC Federation

Chair:
Ute Gunsenheimer (Secretary General, EOSC Association)

11:45 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Ute Gunsenheimer, Secretary General, EOSC Association

11:50 EOSC Federation next steps

Speaker: Matteo Zanaroli, Coordinator of the Italian EOSC Node and Co-Chair of the EOSC Node Coordinators Committee

12:00 Panel discussion on the EOSC Federation priorities for the next phase

Moderator:
Ute Gunsenheimer, Secretary General, EOSC Association

Panelists:
Matteo Zanaroli, Coordinator, Italian EOSC Node and Co-Chair of the EOSC Node Coordinators Committee
Sara Garavelli, Coordinator, EOSC-CONNECT and Development Manager, CSC - IT Center for Science
Pasquale Pagano, Coordinator, European Digital Twin Ocean EOSC Node and Senior Researcher, Institute of Information Science and Technologies, Italian National Research Council (CNR-ISTI)
Mark van de Sanden, Coordinator, GÉANT EOSC Node and Senior Manager (Research & Data), GÉANT
Jordi Duatis Juarez, Policy Officer at DG-CONNECT C.1, European Commission
Juan Bicarregui, Director of Physical Sciences Data Infrastructure (PSDI), UK Research and Innovation Science and Technology Facilities Council (UKRI-STFC)

12:40 Introducing the second wave of EOSC Nodes

13:10 → 13:30 EOSC Symposium 2026: Key Takeaways and Closing Remarks

Speaker: Klaus Tochtermann, President, EOSC Association and Director, ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

13:30 → 14:45 Networking Lunch