Petter Skarheim, Secretary General in the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
Welcome words
Paula Lehtomäki, Cecilia Leveaux & Bodil Aurstad, Nordic Council of Ministers
Towards becoming the most sustainable and integrated region in the world in 2030
The opening speech by Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers, Paula Lehtomäki, followed by a discussion led by Senior Advisors Cecilia Leveaux and Bodil Aurstad.
Arne Flåøyen, Director, NordForsk
Nordic research cooperation towards 2030
Gudmund Høst, Director, NeIC
Digital infrastructure for Nordic research excellence
Digital barriers hinder research cooperation across the Nordic borders.The Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration bring experts together to to remove these cross-border barriers. We have a unique system to help researchers effectively share data and access big supercomputers across the Nordics. The benefit for the whole region is more research for less money.
Konstantinos Glinos, European Commission
Open Science: Quo Vadis?
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the benefits of open and rapid sharing of research results, but it also revealed the limitations of the current research systems and infrastructures. In this talk, I will discuss some of the challenges the conduct of science faces today, how Open Science policies and practices can help us address them, and what else we will need to do to make the pursuit of new knowledge more effective and efficient.
Frank Møller Aarestrup, Technical University of Denmark, DK
COVID-19 Related Research
Frank M. Aarestrup on behalf of the VEO-consortium
The Versatile Emerging infectious disease Observatory (VEO) project consist of 20 European partners and was funded by the European Commission with a starting date of January 1st 2020 for the generation and distribution of high-quality actionable information for evidence-based early warning, risk assessment and monitoring of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). With the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 the project received two additional amendments and naturally focused largely on this disease.
I will through examples present how a research project can respond to a novel disease without completely loosing focus and since a main focus for VEO is to contribute to the establishment of permanent open source solutions for future pandemics also how responding to one disease can be utilized for future pandemics.
Partly through VEO we have established the COVID-19-portal at ENA/EBI, where raw reads for SARS-CoV-2 genomes are publicly available for the global research community. Novel tools for analyzing, visualizing and browsing the data have been rapidly developed and deployed. Importantly, these tools and methods are not only open source, but also available for future pandemics, as well as endemic diseases.
Johanna Törnroos, NeIC / CSC – IT Center for Science, FI
Impact of the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration
The Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC) as an organisation was established in 2012 as part of NordForsk with two roles. First was to operate the Nordic Tier-1 facility providing computing and storage for CERN to be used for research by high energy physicists worldwide. The second one was to facilitate e-infrastructure collaboration across the Nordic borders so that it could contribute to higher-level agendas and goals of the Nordic as well. Third role was assumed in 2019, to coordinate European projects. As a Nordic organisation, it is important for NeIC to demonstrate its value and map out the benefits it brings within and beyond the Nordic region. Each partner participating in NeIC projects expects to benefit from providing their staff and other resources to the projects. Each national funding agency expects NeIC to benefit the national research infrastructure strategies, enable excellent research and create impact at large. The Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM), which funds NeIC through NordForsk expects NeIC to create added value for the Nordic region.
This talk discusses how NeIC has responded to the expectations of its different stakeholders and created added value in the region.
W. H. Trzaska, University of Jyväskylä, FI
Quark Matter, Dark Matter, Does it Matter?
Recent decades attest to unprecedented developments in experimental science. Registration of gravitational waves, detecting neutrino oscillations, and charting the cosmic microwave background are but a few examples. Yet, at the same time, some of the old mysteries, e.g., the existence and nature of Dark Matter, stubbornly defy explanation. In my presentation, I’ll illustrate the importance and relevance of basic research with ALICE – the very successful heavy-ion experiment studying the quark-gluon plasma at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and mention the first results from indirect Dark Matter searches in the Pyhäsalmi mine in Finland.
Wilhelm Widmark, Library Director, Stockholm University & Member of EOSC Association Board of Directors, SE
Open Science in the Nordic countries: from policy to implementation
Open science will in the future become the normal way to conduct science. But to reach that point we have a mayor cultural shift to be done by all stakeholders in the system. The Nordic countries has come rather far in the policy discussions and most of the countries have some policies in place. But now it is time to go from policy to implementation. The policy making is often done top down but the cultural shift must come bottom up. It is important that the implementation will be led by the researchers and meet the researchers needs.
This talk will discuss some policy issues about Open Science in the Nordic countries and how we can engage the researchers to become the leaders of the cultural shift. What possible role will e-infrastructures and EOSC have in this transition and how can we work together in the Nordic countries to make the shift happen.
