The initiative, funded by the German federal government and the federal states, is coordinated by the non-profit Association Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI) e.V., based in Karlsruhe. It aims to systematically provide, manage, and reuse research data as part of Germany's national research data infrastructure.
The mission of NFDI is to ensure that research data is findable, accessible, reusable, and interoperable (FAIR) across disciplines. By improving the management and accessibility of research data, the NFDI enhances research efficiency and quality, fosters collaboration, and ensures that today’s data can be used to answer tomorrow's research questions.
The NFDI serves as an umbrella for multiple consortia. Each focuses on specific domains or interdisciplinary topics, ranging from cultural sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering to life sciences and natural sciences. These consortia are developing tools and services tailored to the needs of their respective communities, while promoting the development and usage of interdisciplinary standards.
The NFDI is also linked to and participates in the development of international initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
GHGA plays an important role in the NFDI, constantly maintaining and strengthening collaboration with consortia in life and biomedical sciences, including NDFI4Health, NDFI4Bioimage, NDFI4Immuno, NDFI4Biodiversity, and NDFI4Microbiota. All these consortia consider omics data as a data modality. GHGA will work closely with NDFI4Health to develop secure and collaborative data analysis solutions for omics using Trusted Research Environments (TREs), particularly for the German National Cohort (NAKO).
Collaborative efforts with NDFI4Health, NDFI4Immuno, and NDFI4Bioimage aim to harmonise metadata schemes, using our expertise in handling sensitive health data. This partnership will also create opportunities for joint activities with the TS4NFDI base service - a cross domain service for the provision, curation, development, harmonisation and mapping of terminologies.
Leading the Task Force Ethics in the NFDI ELSA Section, GHGA addresses ethical issues across NFDI consortia by developing guidelines and training. Additionally, GHGAcontributes to creating fact sheets on FAIR research and data protection within the Task Force Datenschutz (data protection).
In the Assured project, GHGA collaborates with KonsortSWD and BERD@NFDI to develop training and accreditation for scientists handling sensitive research data. With KonsortSWD and NFDI4Health, GHGA also creates concepts for linking and accessing personal data while ensuring privacy. Additionally, GHGA is working with IAM4NFDI to develop legal and data protection concepts for using highly sensitive health data.
GHGA members participated in key conferences, engaging with diverse communities on topics ranging from European genomic data infrastructure and secure processing environments to systems medicine and research data management.
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Five NFDI consortia met in Heidelberg to explore synergies in biomedical data management, laying the groundwork for long-term cooperation to improve the management of complex biomedical data.
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At the EOSC Symposium and the Nextflow Summit, GHGA members strengthened collaborations, shared expertise, and engaged with international experts on advancing FAIR principles and scalable bioinformatics solutions.
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GHGA and NFDI4Health will intensify their collaboration to develop new opportunities for data analyses that will advance the scientific exploitation of personal health data and eventually improve population health.
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Participating actively in two conferences in September, CoRDI and GCB, GHGA members networked closely with the research data infrastructure and bioinformatics communities.
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ELSA Workshop "Anonymization and Data Trusteeship" in Berlin with participation of GHGA Director Prof Eva Winkler, who gave a presentation on 'Ethical Trust Concepts in Medicine and their Implications'.
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