With more than 80 participants on-site and 120 online, the workshop focused on hands-on sessions, use-case-driven discussions, and opportunities to give input into the development of the BAM Data Store. Participants explored how to store, organize, and link their research data more efficiently, and how metadata and semantic services can increase data reusability in daily scientific workflows.

The event opened with welcoming remarks from Prof. Norbert Huber (Vice-president of BAM) and Prof. Chris Eberl (Speaker of NFDI-MatWerk). The program continued with presentations showcasing current applications of the BAM Data Store. In addition, Dr. Niklas Siemer presented work from NFDI-MatWerk’s Use Case IUC04, demonstrating how openBIS can be combined with workflows and ontology solutions developed within the consortium.

The first day concluded with round table discussions on various topics. From the MatWerk team, Pavlína Kružíková led a session on the conceptual dictionary - a way of semantically annotating metadata from pyiron atomistic simulations, while Dr.-Ing. Abril Guzman initiated a conversation on integrating research data management with large language models.

The second day was dedicated to hands-on engagement with the Data Store through three parallel hackathon sessions, each tailored to participants with different levels of familiarity. Hackathon 1 provided a comprehensive introduction to those new to the Data Store. Hackathon 2 focused on development of a data model for the Data Store, and the link to existing ontologies. Hackathon 3, co-led by Pavlína Kružíková, was dedicated to tools lowering the barrier of daily use of the Data Store by BAM scientists. The groups came together at the end of the event to share insights, feedback and next steps.