Prof. Dr. Ute Schepers heads the Chemical Biology Group at the Institute for Functional Interfaces (IFG). She is also a co-founder of the startup vasQlab.
1 Digitizing research data in experimental laboratories is very time-consuming. Why is it still important? What opportunities does it create for research?
In the last decades, we have stored our research data on paper. These then go into an archive, and in the archive they gather dust. So they are not made available to the world. However, both positive and negative data are important in order to gain knowledge from them and to learn from the mistakes of past years. That is why it is all the more important that we make research data available to all scientists. Only together can we drive innovation and research forward.
2. Research 2030: What potentials and challenges do you see in your field through digitisation? What is necessary for success?
It is always difficult to look far into the future, because research is very dynamic and always adapts to the latest circumstances. You can see this very clearly in the Covid pandemic, for example, where we had to react very quickly. Of course, this will also happen in the next few years. But digitization will of course also create scope for scientists to react very quickly to new leap innovations and thus drive science forward. This can be seen very clearly in the fact that we sequenced the human genome at the turn of the millennium, for example. Researchers all over the world did this on a very small scale, and since then we have all been able to access this data. This has given a huge boost to disease research, research into new active substances and much more, because we can now access this data. Of course, this will be much stronger in 2030, because we will then be able to cooperate with the entire scientific community and a rapid transfer of knowledge will be possible.
In the DORA4KIT project, a digital awareness and learning offer for students is being created in collaboration with the ZML with regard to research data management. What are the concrete goals of the project?
As a concrete goal, we want to introduce students to research data management at a very early stage, sensitize them to file data properly and to conduct data acquisition according to good scientific practice. We always see that the older you get and the further you progress in science, the harder it is to push through new digitisation measures. Especially when there isn't much of a need. You still hear "we have chalk" and "we have our paper notebook". It takes a lot longer for this to be implemented in the older grades, which is why we want to get students there at the earliest possible stage.
What applications already exist at KIT for the management of digital research data?
There are already a lot of applications here at KIT. In different faculties, we already have several different ways of operating an electronic lab book. For example, the Chemotion ELN is very advanced, we have KI4MAT in the materials sciences, and we have already made initial progress in this field in physics. With the help of electronic notebooks, it is easy to transfer data to repositories and then make them available to the scientific community in an Open Access format.
Finally, a "personal" question about the digitisation of your everyday life: which web applications do you find enriching when you are on the web - professionally or privately?
I can't think of a web application right now, but the first thing I had in mind was that I really like the automation and digitization in the car. It becomes much more relaxing to drive a car over longer distances because there is a lot of digitalization in cars. That is my daily joy when I get into my car.