19 January 2024 – Research data management Research Data Unit (RDU) will replace the Competence Centre for Research Data
In the course of expanding university research data management, which was largely supported by the Research and Strategy Commission's Research Data Planning Group, the former Competence Centre for Research Data (Kompetenzzentrum für Forschungsdaten, KFD), in operation since 2014, was replaced at the beginning of 2024.
The Research Data Unit is a joint service unit of URZ and the University Library. Its aim is to provide researchers at the university with the best possible support for professional and sustainable research data management in accordance with the university's Research Data Policy.
The Research Data Unit is guided and supported in the fulfillment of its tasks by a Steering Board under academic leadership and by the Committee for Sensitive Research Data. The Steering Board guides the activities of the Research Data Unit in terms of its strategy and includes one member from each of the Fields of Focus 1-4 (FoF) as well as the two directors of the University Library and the University Computing Centre.
The Committee for Sensitive Research Data supports the operational activities of the Research Data Unit in relation to the handling of sensitive data and associated matters of data protection.
The Research Data Unit will continue to operate and further develop local services and infrastructures for the management, publication and long-term archiving of research data, offer consulting and training courses as well as act as an intermediary to regional, national (e.g., NFDI) and international RD infrastructures.
RDM expertise at the university
The University Computing Centre and the University Library have been pooling their expertise in research data management (RDM) in the joint service facility for the past decade. The Research Data Unit (RDU) was founded in 2014 as the Competence Centre for Research Data (KFD) and was renamed the Research Data Unit at the end of 2023 following a decision by the Senate.
The RDU provides researchers comprehensive services for planning, analyzing, storing, archiving and publishing research data. The services also include consulting, training and providing information on any and all aspects of RDM as well as on RDM services across the entire data lifecycle.
For complex research questions that require a high level of computing power and access to high-performance computing resources, the HPC support team at the URZ can provide information and training on the bwHPC clusters' high-performance computers.
Every two years, Heidelberg also hosts the E-Science-Tage, an interdisciplinary series of conferences on research data management and open science.