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EGI Magazine 4

EGI Inspired Magazine 3

EGI Inspired Magazine 2

EGI Inspired Magazine 1

Towards Future Science Through Open and Interconnected e-Infrastructures

When Earth Science Meets e-Infrastructures

Sustaining Upper-Atmosphere Science Together: A Collaboration Beyond the PITHIA-NRF Project

VIP Platform: Empowering Medical Imaging Research and Open Science

Making Cloud Computing Accessible For All Researchers


<p>European research infrastructures increasingly face a shared challenge: how to ensure that valuable scientific services, data, and communities continue to thrive once project funding ends. Recent collaborative steps within the <a href="https://pithia-nrf.eu/">PITHIA-NRF</a> partnership illustrate how this challenge can be addressed through trust, cooperation, and the right enabling infrastructure.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-from-project-to-community-what-is-pithia-nrf">From Project to Community: What is PITHIA-NRF?</h1>



<p>PITHIA-NRF (Plasmasphere, Ionosphere and Thermosphere Integrated Research Environment and Access Services) is a European Research Infrastructure initiative dedicated to advancing scientific excellence in upper-atmosphere and space-weather research. During the project, which started as a four-year-initiative in 2021, PITHIA-NRF integrated 15 major national and regional research infrastructures across Europe, including globally recognised facilities such as <a href="https://www.egi.eu/case-study/eiscat_3d/">EISCAT</a>, LOFAR, ionosondes/digisondes, GNSS receiver networks, riometers, Doppler sounding systems, and VLF receivers.</p>



<p>Together, these facilities generate vast, heterogeneous datasets essential for understanding and predicting space-weather phenomena that affect satellite operations, navigation systems, and critical infrastructure on Earth. PITHIA-NRF’s ambition was not only to connect instruments but to <strong>build a coherent digital ecosystem</strong> where data, models, and services could be accessed and reused across disciplines.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-egi-as-a-cornerstone-of-the-pithia-digital-ecosystem">EGI as a Cornerstone of the PITHIA Digital Ecosystem</h1>



<p>Right from the start, <strong>E</strong>GI has played a central <strong>role</strong> in turning this ambition into reality. Through <a href="https://www.egi.eu/services/research/">EGI services</a>, including federated authentication and authorisation, cloud and data services, monitoring, and operational support, PITHIA deployed the PITHIA-NRF <a href="https://esc.pithia.eu/">e-Science Centre</a><strong> </strong>and operated it at high maturity (TRL 8).</p>



<p>EGI enabled interoperability across national boundaries and technical domains, ensuring that PITHIA services aligned with FAIR principles, <a href="https://open-science-cloud.ec.europa.eu/">EOSC</a> practices, and robust operational standards. Just as importantly, EGI provided something that many research infrastructures lack: a trusted, production-grade operational environment that researchers could rely on without investing heavily in long-term IT maintenance.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-sustainability-question">The Sustainability Question</h1>



<p>As the project approached its conclusion, one question became central: <em>how can PITHIA-NRF continue to operate and evolve beyond project funding?</em></p>



<p>The answer took shape as a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding, now signed by 17 organisations. The MoU establishes the PITHIA-NRF Collaboration Committee, a governance framework that brings together research infrastructures, service providers, and coordinating partners to collectively shape the future of PITHIA.</p>



<p>The MoU focuses on:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Coordinating collaboration beyond the project lifetime</li>



<li>Supporting strategic decision-making and prioritisation</li>



<li>Preparing future funding proposals and innovation activities<br>Ensuring the continued operation of the PITHIA-NRF e-Science Centre and related community services</li>
</ul>



<p>The MoU provides a <strong>l</strong>ightweight yet powerful coordination mechanism that reflects how modern research infrastructures function: through shared responsibility, trust, and best-effort contributions.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-this-matters-for-egi-and-beyond">Why This Matters for EGI and Beyond</h1>



<p>For EGI, participation in the PITHIA-NRF Collaboration Committee is more than continuity: it is strategic alignment in action. The continued operation and support of the PITHIA e-Science Centre position EGI as a long-term enabler of scientific infrastructure; it strengthens engagement with a specialised, high-impact community, showcases the sustainable use of EGI services for discipline-specific research, and opens the door to new collaborations, innovation, and funding opportunities.</p>



<p>At the same time, PITHIA-NRF benefits from EGI’s operational expertise, scalability, and compliance with European standards, allowing scientists to focus on research rather than infrastructure maintenance.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-model-worth-sharing">A Model Worth Sharing</h1>



<p>The PITHIA-EGI collaboration illustrates a broader lesson for the EGI community: sustainability is not achieved through technology alone, but through governance, partnership, and shared vision. The MoU is a starting point: a platform for evolving services, new scientific use cases, and future European initiatives.</p>



<p>As research infrastructures across domains face similar sustainability challenges, the PITHIA-NRF MoU offers a practical, replicable model: one in which EGI enables communities to transition confidently from funded projects to long-term, community-driven operations.</p>



<p><em>A Conversation with Sorina Pop</em></p>



<p>We spoke with Sorina Pop, researcher at <a href="https://www.creatis.insa-lyon.fr/site/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CREATIS</a> &#8211; a joint research centre among CNRS, INSERM, INSA Lyon, Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University, and Jean-Monnet University of Saint-Etienne in France &#8211; and coordinator of <a href="https://www.creatis.insa-lyon.fr/vip/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VIP, Virtual Imaging Platform</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>VIP is a web portal for medical imaging applications. It allows users to access scientific applications as a service directly through a web browser and to utilise distributed computing resources transparently. It leverages resources within the biomed virtual organisation of the EGI e-Infrastructure to provide an open service for researchers worldwide.VIP was launched around 2010, in collaboration with EGI&#8217;s <a href="https://www.egi.eu/case-study/biomed/">Biomed virtual organisation</a>, to address key challenges faced by domain experts who lacked computing expertise.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/VIP-1024x683.png" alt="" class="wp-image-36450" style="width:462px;height:auto" srcset="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/VIP-1024x683.png 1024w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/VIP-300x200.png 300w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/VIP-768x512.png 768w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/VIP-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/VIP-2048x1365.png 2048w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/VIP-1200x800.png 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>


<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-origins-and-core-challenges">Origins and Core Challenges</h1>



<p>VIP was conceived to provide transparent access to compute and storage resources, similar to modern cloud services but tailored for researchers focused on medical imaging rather than informatics. Early hurdles included a steep learning curve with EGI resources, which VIP mitigated by enabling access-as-a-service for resource-intensive applications such as Monte Carlo simulators. Over the years, it evolved to support open and reproducible science natively, with tools ensuring traceability without burdening users.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-egi-services-and-evolution">EGI Services and Evolution</h1>



<p>The platform primarily leverages HTC services via Dirac for job scheduling and storage, alongside CVMFS for software deployment and <a href="https://www.egi.eu/service/check-in/">EGI Check-in</a> for authentication. Dirac&#8217;s flexibility enables seamless use of HTC or cloud resources, including customised Virtual Machines for high-memory requirements, while maintaining transparency for users. While cloud interest grows, Dirac enables opportunistic resource use without backend rewrites.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-collaborations-and-impact">Collaborations and Impact</h1>



<p>Joint European projects such as <a href="https://www.egi.eu/project/egi-ace/">EGI-ACE</a> and <a href="https://www.egi.eu/project/eosc-data-commons/">EOSC Data Commons</a> have strengthened ties, fostering technology adoption and expert exchanges across communities. VIP now serves over 1,500 users worldwide, prioritising steady impact through publications over explosive growth. A secondary private instance deployed in France for projects dealing with sensitive data demonstrates VIP&#8217;s deployability on local clusters or EGI, supporting both Dirac and direct batch schedulers.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-future-directions">Future Directions</h1>



<p>Recent advances standardise application imports for reproducibility, with ongoing code refactoring and EOSC Data Commons integrations expanding APIs for dispatchers like data matchmakers. VIP&#8217;s domain-agnostic design can suit other disciplines beyond life sciences, and distributed computing via EGI has been pivotal: much early work would have been impossible without it. Emerging AI uses within VIP already include running trained models and GPU training, while agentic planning for experiment design is next in the development pipeline.</p>



<p>EGI&#8217;s enduring support, reliable infrastructure, and shared values around open science excellence underpin the collaboration&#8217;s success. Technical reliability persists, and the relationship thrives on mutual benefits, positioning VIP prominently in EOSC roadmaps.</p>



<p>The rapid expansion of scientific research into macrocosms and microcosms, extreme conditions, and interdisciplinary infusion has set the stage for a transformative new direction in global research. The fragmented domains must be reconvened through a sustained and robust mechanism, with research e-infrastructures assuming a leadership role. Through a strategic partnership between the <a href="https://english.cnic.cas.cn/">Computer Network Information Centre (CNIC)</a> of CAS and EGI, this initiative aims to establish essential infrastructures to ensure the world’s diverse digital systems operate cohesively. It also catalyses the development of the <a href="https://goscloud.net/">Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC)</a> initiative, which was successfully launched in 2021 as an exemplar of open science infrastructure, in accordance with <a href="https://doi.org/10.54677/MNMH8546">UNESCO’s Recommendation on Open Science</a>.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-cloud-federation-pilot-to-empower-the-global-research-community">A Cloud Federation Pilot to Empower the Global Research Community</h1>



<p>The partnership between CNIC and EGI was officially inaugurated in June 2020. It aims to develop robust, interoperable e-infrastructures tailored to the international research community. It involves not only technical adoption but also strategic efforts to support multidisciplinary open science, ensuring that multimodal research resources are open for seamless cross-border sharing.</p>



<p>Operating within the <a href="https://www.egi.eu/project/egi-ace/">EGI-ACE</a> international cloud integration task force, CNIC and EGI specialists dedicated nearly a year to addressing the engineering prerequisites for a production-level cloud federation. The advancements achieved through this initiative provided empirical validation of a functional collaborative model, culminating in the official inauguration of a China-Europe cloud federation testbed in September 2021. This testbed aims to support cutting-edge research in domains and regions. For instance, in space physics, the EGI-CNIC federation cloud enabled cross-border access to computing resources and data sharing for research, thus validating the robustness of the cloud testbed.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="587" src="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC1-1024x587.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-36411" srcset="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC1-1024x587.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC1-300x172.jpg 300w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC1-768x440.jpg 768w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC1-1200x688.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC1.jpg 1216w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>



<p><em>Figure 1. Cloud e-infrastructures open-science collaboration starts in 2020</em></p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dialogues-on-enhancing-open-science-partnership">Dialogues on Enhancing Open-Science Partnership&nbsp;</h1>



<p>Beyond technical adoption, policy and community dialogues among stakeholders also advance the development of a trustworthy e-infrastructure ecosystem and nourish the development of the <a href="https://codata.org/initiatives/making-data-work/global-open-science-cloud/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Global Open Science Cloud</a> Initiative. By leveraging the international collaboration network, a series of capacity-building workshops has been delivered, including the Global Open Science Cloud Workshop series (1st, 2nd, 3rd), international symposium on Open Science Clouds (2023, 2025), and others. The joint group and its international partners reached consensus on the next steps that highlight the role of Open Science as instrumental, AI as a scalable capacity, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as domain demonstrations. The ongoing dialogues also focus on developing guidelines for the delivery of research resources across regions and domains in the evolving digital era. Standards exploration for open science cloud service delivery has been endorsed by CODATA as a <a href="https://codata.org/initiatives/task-groups/open-science-cloud-service-xi-metadata-tg-oscs-xi-metadata-tg/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">joint Task Group</a> for the next two years to deepen understanding of interoperability across research facilities.&nbsp;</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-2025-pivot-and-the-future-of-ai-for-science">The 2025 Pivot and the Future of AI for Science</h1>



<p>As we approach the five-year milestones, we better understand the role of co-developing open and trustworthy e-infrastructures in breaking silos to tackle complex research questions. To harness the power of Artificial Intelligence, EGI and CNIC renewed their Memorandum of Understanding in 2025 during the GOSC flagship event of the <a href="https://english.cnic.cas.cn/nws/events/202508/t20250821_1051190.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">International Symposium on Open Science Cloud</a>. Under this new mandate, CNIC and EGI agree to leverage AI-ready e-infrastructures for future Open Science. The partnership aims to build the intelligent &#8220;backbone&#8221; for modern AI-ready research in scientific discovery.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>This is a new step for research and international collaboration</em>, says Long Chun, Deputy Director of CNIC, during the renewed MoU signing ceremony.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Upon these new collaborations, EGI will leverage its federations and the ENVRI community to deliver integrated data services for the UN SDGs and Open Science</em>, says Tiziana Ferrari, Director of the EGI Foundation.</p>



<p>The journey from the first MoU in 2020 to the AI-driven pivot of 2025 illustrates the power of sustained, infrastructure-level cooperation. By first building the technical foundations between CSTCloud and EGI, and then scaling that model through the GOSC framework, the partners have transformed the ideal of &#8220;Open Science&#8221; into a functional reality. As the alliance enters its next decade, the focus remains on providing a secure, inclusive, and intelligent platform for researchers worldwide.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC2.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC2-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-36412" srcset="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC2-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC2-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC2-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC2-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/CNIC2.jpg 1245w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>



<p><em>Figure 2. Renewed strategic MoU Signed in 2025</em></p>



<p><em>EPOS and EGI partner to scale computing and collaboration services for European geoscientists</em></p>



<p>Understanding earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and other Earth processes requires more than isolated datasets or even single disciplines. These phenomena are governed by complex, interconnected processes that span spatial scales from laboratory experiments to continental tectonics, with temporal scales ranging from seconds to geological time. And they generate large, heterogeneous data volumes distributed across many infrastructures. The challenge facing the solid Earth science community is therefore equally <em>digital</em> and <em>scientific</em>. This challenge can be summed up in the question of, “How do we integrate, process, and analyse complex data at scale in a way that is sustainable, interoperable, and reusable?” The <a href="https://www.epos-eu.org/epos-eric">European Plate Observing System (EPOS)</a> was established precisely to address this question.</p>



<p>EPOS is a pan-European Research Infrastructure that enables the integrated use of multidisciplinary solid Earth science data, data products, software and services, supporting both fundamental research and societal applications related to geo-hazards, geo-resources exploitation, and environmental sustainability.</p>



<p>Today, EPOS integrates data and services from more than 250 national research infrastructures across 26 countries, spanning domains such as seismology, volcanology, geodesy, satellite Earth observation, geomagnetism, near-fault observatories, laboratory experiments, geological modelling, anthropogenic hazards, and tsunami science.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/EPOS_ERIC_Partnership_2026_January_0-1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="993" src="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/EPOS_ERIC_Partnership_2026_January_0-1-1024x993.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-36444" style="width:401px;height:auto" srcset="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/EPOS_ERIC_Partnership_2026_January_0-1-1024x993.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/EPOS_ERIC_Partnership_2026_January_0-1-300x291.jpg 300w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/EPOS_ERIC_Partnership_2026_January_0-1-768x745.jpg 768w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/EPOS_ERIC_Partnership_2026_January_0-1-1536x1490.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/EPOS_ERIC_Partnership_2026_January_0-1-1200x1164.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/EPOS_ERIC_Partnership_2026_January_0-1.jpg 1538w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure></div>


<p><em>Figure 1. EPOS ERIC Partnerships</em></p>



<p>At the heart of EPOS lies a federated digital architecture. Ten thematic communities from different domains of geoscience, known as Thematic Core Services (TCS), curate and harmonise domain-specific data and services. A central hub, the Integrated Core Services (ICS), provides common discovery, access, and processing capabilities through a<a href="https://www.ics-c.epos-eu.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> one-stop-shop platform</a> that is also programmatically accessible via APIs. This architecture enables multidisciplinary workflows and also introduces demanding requirements in terms of computing capacity, cloud orchestration, authentication and authorisation, service reliability, and long-term sustainability.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><a href="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/SimpleScreenshotEPOSPlatform.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="555" src="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/SimpleScreenshotEPOSPlatform-1024x555.png" alt="" class="wp-image-36445" srcset="https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/SimpleScreenshotEPOSPlatform-1024x555.png 1024w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/SimpleScreenshotEPOSPlatform-300x163.png 300w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/SimpleScreenshotEPOSPlatform-768x416.png 768w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/SimpleScreenshotEPOSPlatform-1200x650.png 1200w, https://cdn.egi.eu/app/uploads/2026/02/SimpleScreenshotEPOSPlatform.png 1440w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure></div>


<p><em>Figure 2. EPOS ERIC Platform</em></p>



<p>This is where collaboration with an established, federated e-infrastructure provider becomes strategic, and where EGI enters the picture.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-egi-services-enable-epos-operations-and-innovation">How EGI Services Enable EPOS Operations and Innovation</h1>



<p>EGI provides scalable computing, storage, data management, and analytics services to research communities worldwide. Through its cloud, high-throughput, and federated computing capabilities, EGI offers exactly the type of flexible and sustainable “digital backbone” required for a distributed infrastructure such as EPOS.</p>



<p>The Memorandum of Understanding between EPOS ERIC and EGI establishes the foundation for a long-term collaboration in which EPOS gains a robust digital backbone, and EGI extends its services to a new, data-intensive scientific community whose real-world use cases can drive service evolution, testing, and innovation. A pivotal element of this collaboration is the support for the computational component of the <a href="https://www.ics-c.epos-eu.org/">EPOS Platform</a>, which consists of a distributed environment designed to provide future computing and storage resources for running data processing, modelling, and analysis workflows.</p>



<p></p>



<p>Through this partnership, EGI supports EPOS in several concrete ways:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Federated computing infrastructure</strong>: EGI resource centres provide cloud and computing capacity that underpin the EPOS computing platform, enabling data processing, modelling, and analysis services to run close to the data and scale, according to demand.</li>



<li><strong>Service quality and sustainability</strong>: The collaboration defines Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) to ensure reliability, performance monitoring, and long-term sustainability of EPOS digital services.</li>



<li><strong>Authentication and authorisation</strong>: By aligning with EGI Check-in and federated AAI solutions, EPOS simplifies secure access to services across national boundaries, supporting seamless user experiences, in line with European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) principles.</li>



<li><strong>Interactive analysis environments</strong>: EGI Notebooks enable EPOS to offer Jupyter-based environments for data exploration, training, and community schools, lowering the technical barrier for users and fostering reproducible science.</li>



<li><strong>User support and competence centres</strong>: Through EGI’s federated support model, EPOS researchers benefit from domain-aware technical assistance, accelerating onboarding and problem resolution.</li>
</ul>



<p>The collaboration is not limited to infrastructure provisioning. It includes joint requirements gathering, co-development, testing, and validation, ensuring that EGI services evolve in response to real scientific use cases emerging from the solid Earth science community.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-delivering-value-to-the-epos-community">Delivering Value to the EPOS Community</h1>



<p>For the EPOS community, the value of collaborating with EGI extends well beyond access to cloud hosting resources. It fundamentally strengthens EPOS’s ability to deliver on its mission of sustainable, open, and multidisciplinary science.</p>



<p>The collaboration enables operational robustness. By relying on a federated European infrastructure rather than isolated, project-based solutions, EPOS can offer stable services that persist beyond individual funding cycles. This is critical for national research infrastructures and scientific communities that depend on EPOS as a long-term reference platform.</p>



<p>By enhancing scientific innovation through this collaboration, EPOS envisions EGI playing a key role in enabling access to scalable computing and interactive notebooks so that advanced analytics can be made possible in order to apply data-intensive and AI-driven methods across EPOS datasets in the future. This opens new research avenues, from high-resolution seismic imaging to near-real-time deformation analysis and integrated hazard assessment.</p>



<p>This collaboration also reinforces alignment with EOSC in the context of the forthcoming <a href="https://envri.eu/">ENVRI</a> node, where EGI acts as the key technological and e-infrastructure partner. EPOS&#8217;s data and services are naturally positioned to be discoverable, accessible, and reusable, aligning well with the common vision of federating resources from diverse environmental Research Infrastructures in Europe in the broader EOSC ecosystem. This will contribute to enhancing the visibility of EPOS assets and support their reuse well beyond the solid Earth science community.</p>



<p>Finally, the collaboration fosters community building and skills development. Joint training events, competence centres, and outreach activities help equip researchers with the digital skills needed to fully exploit modern e-infrastructures, while strengthening ties between Earth scientists and e-infrastructure experts.</p>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-shared-vision-for-the-future">A Shared Vision for the Future</h1>



<p>The EPOS–EGI collaboration illustrates how thematic Research Infrastructures and horizontal e-infrastructures can work together to address Europe’s most complex scientific challenges and build resilient, user-centric and future-proof research environments.</p>



<p>As the collaboration evolves, EPOS and EGI will continue to deepen service integration, explore long-term sustainability models, and jointly contribute to training and outreach, ensuring that the benefits of this collaboration extend to researchers, decision-makers, and society at large.</p>



<p></p>


A Focus on Collaborations

Get Ready for EGI2026


<p>EGI2026 is set to bring the community together once again; this year, we’ll gather in the beautiful city of Ghent, taking over the remarkable 13th-century Bijloke for what promises to be an engaging and inspiring week.</p>



<p>Every year, the EGI conference creates a space where scientists, service providers, technical experts, policy makers and early-career researchers meet not only to present their latest work but also to exchange ideas, spark collaborations, and reconnect in person. <br>EGI2026 continues this tradition, offering two exciting ways to get involved.</p>



<p>The <a href="https://go.egi.eu/EGI2026_CFC" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Call for Contributions</a> is now open, inviting the community to help shape the programme. Whether you would like to give a talk, present a poster, or demonstrate a service or tool, this is your opportunity to step onto the stage and share your work with an international audience. From concise short talks to in-depth presentations, interactive demonstrations and poster pitches, the programme is designed to showcase both scientific results and practical innovation. Submissions are open until 13 April 2026 (23:59 CET), with notifications of acceptance expected by the end of April.</p>



<p>At the same time, organisations, projects and companies are warmly invited to join <a href="https://conference.egi.eu/documents/egi-2026-exhibition-brochure-v0.8.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">EGI2026 as a partner or sponsor.</a> A select number of exhibitors will have the opportunity to engage directly with participants during the core conference days, connecting with the community in the exhibition area during coffee and lunch breaks. Beyond visibility, partnership opportunities include organising side events, contributing workshops, or hosting sponsored talks, creating meaningful interaction with a highly engaged audience. As always, exhibition spaces are limited and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications open until 1 June 2026 or until capacity is reached.</p>



<p>Whether you wish to contribute to the programme or showcase your organisation’s work, EGI2026 offers a unique platform to connect, collaborate, and shape the future of digital research and innovation. We look forward to welcoming you to Ghent!</p>


Shape the Programme, Join the Stage: Get Involved in #EGI2026

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EGI Inspired Magazine 4

Spotlight on Research

EGI Inspired Magazine 4

Spotlight on Research