New POLiS server for research data
At the Institute for Applied Materials - Computational Materials Science (IAM-CMS) at KIT, a new server for the Cluster of Excellence was put into operation. In the final stage of expansion, it will provide 1.2 petabyte of usable memory and 80 CPU cores for analytical calculations and further applications. The server is used to centrally store research data generated at POLiS, to analyze it more efficiently and to make it available to other researchers. The researchers manage and document their digital research data via the data exchange and analysis platform Kadi4Mat (Karlsruhe Data Infrastructure for Materials Science), which is being developed at IAM-CMS. "The responsible and far-sighted handling of digital research data is becoming increasingly important, but it is also a great challenge. Therefore, the new POLiS server represents an enormous gain for research data management and thus for the entire research activity of POLiS", says Dr. Ephraim Schoof, the research data officer of the cluster.
Research data is as diverse as the methods by which it is obtained. Although there is no universal definition, research data can be understood as all data generated in the context of scientific research. This includes data obtained from observations, surveys, measurements, experiments or simulations as well as processed data. Methodological procedures such as algorithms, software or workflows can be a central result of a scientific work and thus also belong to research data. Good research data management, i.e., the administration, storage, exchange and accessibility of large amounts of data, allows research work based on the findings of others and thus accelerates research in general.
In workshops, POLiS scientists learn, among other things, how research data can be digitally retrieved, made accessible and also reused according to the FAIR principles.