Research Data Management for Energy Research in Focus: The 3rd NFDI4Energy Conference in Aachen

Researchers and infrastructure experts from across Germany gathered to shape the future of energy research data management.

As a cornerstone of its community work, NFDI4Energy organizes an annual conference that brings together researchers, developers, and infrastructure specialists from across the field. The third edition of this conference took place on 24–25 March 2026 in Aachen, organized by NFDI4Energy in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University. It brought together stakeholders from research, infrastructure, and data management to discuss current developments, identify synergies, and work towards a shared vision for research data management in the energy sector.

The program opened with a series of interactive workshops addressing key challenges in the field. Topics ranged from the semantic structuring of metadata and the use of the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG) to the development of community-driven resource collections. The workshops set the stage for the scientific sessions that followed, organized in parallel tracks covering semantic technologies, grid and device tooling, FAIR data, and societal and policy-related dimensions. A special highlight was the market of consortia, where related initiatives presented their services and connected and exchanged with the conference participants.

The second day opened with a keynote session contextualizing broader trends in research data management and outlining future directions. Poster sessions followed, enlivened by the “1-Minute Madness” format, where researchers had exactly one minute to pitch their work and draw attention to their posters, a fast-paced and engaging way to spark discussion. Further sessions on FAIR infrastructures and energy system modeling connected conceptual foundations with practical implementations from within the community.

In 2026, the conference introduced a scientific track for the first time, giving researchers the opportunity to present and publish their work in a peer-reviewed, open-access format, an important step towards strengthening the scientific profile and visibility of the community.

Across both days, the conference served as a vital platform for exchange and networking, contributing to a growing shared understanding and increasingly aligned goals within the NFDI4Energy community. For students and early-career researchers in renewable energy and related fields, events like this offer a direct window into how the research infrastructure underpinning the energy transition is being built and how to get involved.

For questions, please get in touch with us at: conference@nfdi4energy.org