EOSC Symposium 2026: integration models and technologies for FAIR data
From 15 to 17 October 2026, Area Science Park participated in the EOSC Symposium 2026 in Florence, the annual event organised by the EOSC Association, with two contributions to sessions dedicated to the use of EOSC Nodes and technologies for making datasets FAIR-compliant (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). The EOSC Association brings together the European community involved in developing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), Europe’s common data space supporting research and innovation, which aims to connect research infrastructures, resources and services.
FORGE: integrating infrastructures and genomic data within the EOSC Federation
Mariarita de Luca, Federica Bazzocchi and Valerio Piomponi from Area Science Park presented the results of FORGE – Federated Open Research Data for Genomics in EOSC, during the Usage of EOSC Nodes and related benefits session, which focused on practical experiences of integrating EOSC Nodes to support research activities.
FORGE is being developed in collaboration with the Italian EOSC Node and the CERN EOSC Node. The project tests approaches to integrating infrastructures, computing services and distributed data management systems, enabling researchers to discover, access and process genomic datasets distributed across different nodes of the EOSC Federation through interoperable and reproducible workflows.
The project combines Area Science Park’s ORFEO HPC/AI infrastructure with Rucio, an open-source system developed at CERN for distributed data management, and services from the EOSC ecosystem. The workflow also incorporates machine-readable FAIR-compliant metadata, improving the discoverability and reuse of scientific data. FORGE thus contributes to the development of a replicable integration model that could potentially be adopted by other research infrastructures and future EOSC Nodes to support federated data management and research activities, particularly in the life sciences.
From FAIR data production to curation
The Automating data FAIRification session explored technologies for making scientific data compliant with FAIR principles, both from the design stage (FAIR-by-design) and through subsequent adaptation processes (ex post FAIRification), with particular attention to scalability, economic sustainability and the transferability of solutions.
Stefano Cozzini, Director of Area Science Park’s Research Institute for Technological Innovation, gave a presentation entitled FAIR from Creation to Curation: Technologies, Lab Upgrades and HPC Needs, focusing on the FAIR-by-design methodology and the application of FAIR principles throughout the entire data lifecycle, from laboratory data generation to curation and preservation.
Cozzini presented experiences from the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) projects NFFA-DI and PRP@CERIC, for which Area Science Park designed the digital infrastructures. He highlighted the role of enabling technologies, upgrades to laboratory instrumentation, and HPC and AI computing resources, including the ORFEO data centre, in making scientific data genuinely reusable.
The EOSC Federation enters its operational phase
Organised by the EOSC Association, the symposium marked the EOSC Federation’s transition to its operational phase, bringing together leading representatives of the international research and innovation community in Florence. Speakers included Manuel Heitor, the driving force behind the Align, Act, Accelerate report and former Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education; Rosie Hicks, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Data Commons; and Mercè Crosas, Director of the Computational Social Science and Humanities Laboratory at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Italy’s Minister of Universities and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, also addressed the symposium, highlighting Italy’s role in the development of EOSC and the importance of the Federation for Italian and European researchers.