The meeting took place at the DFG headquarters in Bonn. The consortium was represented by Chris Eberl, Tilmann Hickel, Martina Zimmermann, Harald Sack, and Marius Politze, who presented the progress and ongoing work of NFDI-MatWerk. NFDI-MatWerk presented in the same session as Daphne4NFDI and FAIRmat.

The defense consisted of a presentation followed by a poster session, allowing for detailed discussions with the reviewers. The main topics addressed included community engagement, user-centric development, measures of success, data quality and curation, and the sustainability of solutions. The feedback was almost exclusively positive. The broad range of activities, particularly in our Infrastructure Use Cases, and the well-founded strategic orientation of the Task Areas were recognized as strengths.

This outcome is the result of the strong collaboration within the entire NFDI-MatWerk team. Many members have contributed extensively in recent weeks—whether through preparing demonstrators, refining key performance indicators, or rehearsing the defense. A sincere thank you to everyone involved!

With this encouraging feedback, work now continues on the follow-up proposal, which will be a key focus in the coming months.