Research Data Service Center: a glimpse behind the scenes

After completing a degree in Geography at the Free University of Berlin, Christian Bittner did his doctorate at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg with a multi-disciplinary dissertation project on web mapping in Israel and Palestine involving elements of social science, cultural studies, cartography and data science. Dr. Bittner is also a certified Data Librarian and interested in the digitalization of society and academia, with a particular focus on issues of open science and digital maturity. As coordinator and point of contact for the service centre, he welcomes all enquiries about RDM or related topics.

After completing a degree in Biology, Ewa Elizabeth Bres obtained a PhD at the International Graduate School of Neuroscience, Ruhr University Bochum. During her doctorate she studied the impact of the lipoprotein receptor Lrp1 on brain development, with a focus on the astrocyte lineage. She is interested in Open Science, scientific misconduct, good research practice and scientific photography. At the Service Center, she manages the research data repository bonndata and is a contact person for training.

Stefanie Läpke studied Romance and German studies at the universities of Bonn, Sorbonne Paris IV and Leipzig with a focus on French corpus linguistics. She is the contact person for Digital Humanities at the University and State Library and is responsible for all questions regarding computational methods and tools in the humanities. She is particularly interested in Open Science, improved availability of resources for research in the humanities and full-text recognition. At the Service Point, she is the contact person for inquiries related to Digital Humanities.

Daniel Rudolf studied chemistry at Heidelberg University and obtained his doctorate there as well at the Inorganic Chemistry Institute, completing his dissertation on guanidinate-stabilized gallium hydrides. He is also a Certified Data Scientist specialized in Data Management (Fraunhofer FIT). He is particularly interested in the latest developments in academic publication and bibliometrics, and in the digitization of research. He is the contact person at the Service Center regarding Electronic Lab Notebooks.

While studying biology (with a focus on computer science and physics) at the University of Bonn, Ben Stöver also worked there as a research software engineer. He then moved to the University of Münster and worked initially as part of his doctorate and then as a research assistant, mainly on the development of bioinformatic software. The focus was on improving the reusability of scientific data and the reproducibility of studies. In addition to this research activity, his area of responsibility also included responsibilities in teaching and IT infrastructure at the WWU Münster. As a software developer and IT architect at the Research Data Service Center, he is responsible for the development of the storage infrastructure and the services for integrated research data infrastructure based on it.

Annika Tensi studied at Maastricht University and Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, where she also completed her PhD. In her research, she focused on sustainable agricultural innovations, exploring various social science questions at the intersection of economics, environment, and society in agricultural practice. Annika considers Open Science practices to be important for strengthening scientific integrity and avoiding dubious practices. She sees transparency and reproducibility as opportunities to improve the research culture. At the service point, she is the contact person for the research data repository bonndata as well as training sessions.

Sergej Zerr studied computer science and information engineering at the Universities Osnabrück and Twente (NL), where he was a part of the Semantic Web Community and actively participated in the metadata initiatives of DublinCore and W3C. Sergej received his Ph.D. in privacy-aware information retrieval at Hannover University, where he led several national and EU projects on AI-supported data analysis in the areas of internet research, qualitative secondary research, human computation, and Industry 4.0. At the Service Center, he is responsible for the IT-architecture, design, and technical implementation of the Research Data Management infrastructure and services at the University IT and Data Center (HRZ) of the Bonn University.