From 21-23 January 2025, 150 participants from across the EOSC landscape flocked to Seville (Spain) to attend the second EOSC Winter School, an event organized by the EOSC Association and the EOSC Focus project. Participants, including representatives from EOSC-related projects, the European Commission, and the EOSC-A Board and Secretariat, convened under the banner “Convergence towards the EOSC Federation: Encouraging collaborative efforts among stakeholders”. The event confirmed the community’s strong interest in a bottom-up support for the emerging EOSC Federation as it advances toward operational readiness in 2025.
TU Graz, one of the project partners in EOSC Focus, manages the collaboration between INFRAEOSC projects through a structured framework to ensure that their results and contributions align with the broader vision of implementing EOSC. In keeping with this vision, Ilire Hasani-Mavriqi and Stefan Reichmann (RDM Team, TU Graz/EOSC SOA) were pivotal in shaping the 2025 EOSC Winter School by managing the programme development, convening subcommittees, co-creating the working sessions, and managing participants‘ requests.
A detailed overview of the phased build-up of the EOSC Federation was given during the Winter School by representatives of the EC. Discussions highlighted the pivotal role of the EOSC EU Node, which has been offering services since autumn 2024, and the evolving EOSC Federation Handbook, which will serve to guide the Federation’s operations, architecture, policies, and scientific services during the enrollment of the first candidate EOSC Nodes this spring. Three parallel breakout sessions combined presentations and workshops to discuss how to align with the Strategic Pillars of the EOSC Partnership’s Multi-Annual Roadmap 2026-27. One key takeaway concerns the importance of exploring sustainable exploitation pathways of results early in projects’ life cycles. The 2025 EOSC Winter School brought a forward-looking perspective, emphasizing sustainability and exploring the possibilities to leverage results of INFRAEOSC projects within the EOSC Federation, reaffirming its role as a key community event, fostering collaboration, knowledge exchange, networking, and preparation for the EOSC Federation.
A comprehensive report on the 2025 EOSC Winter School can be found here.
Mag. Dr. Stefan Reichmann, BA MA, RDM Team, TU GRAZ/EOSC SOA, stefan.reichmann@tugraz.at