Debora Testi, the DICE Project Coordinator from CINECA, holds a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Bologna and has been acting as principal investigator in different EC funded projects and as project manager for computer-aided software application development. She is part of the HPC and cloud technologies team and currently involved in EU-funded projects, like HBP, EOSC-hub, and HPC-Europa3. She is member of the PRACE Board of Directors and of the EUDAT CDI secretariat.
We have posed her a series of questions in order to better understand the DICE project, which kicked-off last January, with the aim to strengthen the EOSC initiative by supporting researchers with resources and state-of-the-art services for their multidisciplinary data management workflows.
How will your own expertise and that of the Consortium partners contribute to the success of the project?
As for myself, I have worked many years in EU funded projects and as user engagement leader for EUDAT CDI, and I’ll use my experience to support the highly qualified members of the DICE consortium to efficiently work together.
All DICE partners are very committed and with a long experience in providing data services to a wide set of research communities; this, together with the past experience the service providers have as part of EOSC related projects, should ensure a very successful endeavour.
Why do you think the Virtual Access mechanisms will stimulate the usage of the DICE resources and services?
The Virtual access cost compensation mechanisms is partially new for services and resources related to data management. I believe that having services and resources free at the point of use is an important opportunity for users and communities to set-up production solutions or for piloting research workflows in their scientific domain. The services offered via DICE are available since some time (like the EUDAT services part of DICE) and will remain available at the end of the project. Long term sustainability is thus a key point for success and DICE partners will work during the project to define long term policies for the services and to make clear as soon as possible to customers which might be costs associated to the services usage at the end of the DICE project.
Which impact do you expect DICE will have on the EU research community?
Data management services and alignment with the FAIR principles is becoming more and more a need in many scientific domains. DICE has a nice opportunity to boost the usage of such services and to strength the EOSC with the resources needed by the research community in general. Facilitate Open Science is the main impact we expect from our joint effort in DICE.
Could you share a take-away message for the researchers who could benefit from the services offered?
As mentioned already, DICE is offering a full set of services and related resources for research data management. The users can ask for standard solutions that can be quickly served by our service providers but also customised ones for which we can provide the support needed to identify the best solution and services for their needs. So, DICE is absolutely a nice opportunity for researchers and communities to make a step forward towards Open Science and FAIR data management.