Global challenges — Regional opportunities: How can Research Infrastructure and eScience support Nordic competitiveness?

Through eScience, new exciting approaches to conducting scientific research opens up. It also facilitates work in many research areas, particularly areas with exceptionally high demands on data storage and processing such as astrophysics, bioinformatics, epidemiology, environmental monitoring, and mathematics.

The speakers — including representatives from the Nordic countries as well as Europe — presented examples of current and future use and experiences were shared. This provided for an interesting exchange of both problems and possible solutions.

Four parallel thematic workshops took place during the second day of the conference. A joint conference statement and statements from the four workshops can be found here.

The conclusion was that eScience is an interdisciplinary infrastructure that crosses all academia. If registers are linked to well-equipped databases, there are great opportunities for excellent research which can benefit all sciences. It is essential to have a long-term perspective on research infrastructures and eScience, one that won´t jeopardise research infrastructures and technology.

The lack of coordination between the Nordic countries is a problem that needs to be better addressed. The different countries have different processes and this needs to be streamlined before collaboration can take place. The conclusion was that collaboration should not be forced, and should happen between the countries best equipped for cooperation on different projects. Collaboration with other EU countries is also an option that should be encouraged.

As critical mass is becoming the most important aspect of research infrastructures, the Nordic countries are becoming very small on the global research scale. The speakers agreed that the Nordic nations should send a message to their ministers that even though the respective countries may have different viewpoints on other topics, it is essential that we work together in the field of science. Science is global and the Nordic region must take responsibility to create common funds and collaborate between countries.

At the same time, large research infrastructures must be about science and excellence in research, not about regenerating areas. The scientific output of a large research infrastructure is the success in attracting the best talent, and if a region can benefit as a result of a successful research centre that is an added bonus, the conference speakers agreed.

Text: Anna Lagerkvist

In the right column, you can find the revised statements from the four workshop groups as well as the joint statement from the conference. Presentations from the plenary speakers are also available.