As research facilities and their staff of researchers and scientists grapple daily with producing, storing, and preserving their petabytes of data for new discoveries and studies — others need to construct systems that can enable them to build on their findings. Within the data collected each day is the opportunity to make new discoveries, including in the backlogs of data, as patterns are recognized and scientists learn new ways to interpret the information. Making data FAIR, or findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, is the center of discussion for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) CI Compass FAIR Topical Working Group (TWG) each month. The working group hosts scientists and engineers across multiple major research facilities discussing their unique challenges and solutions to ensuring their systems hit all four of the FAIR goals.

David Butcher joined the working group on behalf of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab). Butcher, a research faculty member, will help the National MagLab develop a new system to record, store, and preserve its work. He hopes to create a system with options that allow others to access the data that will be a part of scientific breakthroughs in the future.

Major research facilities can generate decades’ worth of data with their systems, many of which were built along with the original instrument and data type. Observatories can be built for observing the sun, the stars, or neutrinos. The National MagLab runs a user facility with nearly 2,000 researchers a year using unique magnet systems to make discoveries across physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, and other scientific disciplines. The facility does not have its own on-site data repository. Instead, the researchers and scientists who use the National MagLab take their data back to their home labs and institutions with them after their time with the instruments. Ultimately, this data drives new discoveries advancing health, the environment, energy, and new technology.

MagLab researchers are working with physicians at the University of Florida on a new MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technique that can show new details of the lungs, which will help advance treatment for diseases like asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Another study couples the MagLab with the Mayo Clinic to address early cancer detection.

These studies credit the MagLab, but the data generated is kept by those performing the research. While the MagLab does keep records of which researchers worked at the lab and what research was done, it does not retain the data on-site, and the many different applications of its resources pose a particular challenge for building that capability.

“Different fields and facilities have their own infrastructure and strategies for their data management. Many of them use completely different software ecosystems or underlying architecture,” said Butcher. “Through the working group, we are learning from other facilities’ challenges to update their legacy systems so we can prepare ours with their future needs in mind.”

The FAIR Data TWG meets monthly to provide a space for open conversation about current challenges and successes, new developments in FAIR data, and access to NSF CI Compass’s specialists on the topic, including Don Brower, FAIR data expert for NSF CI Compass and research professor and computational scientist at the Center for Research Computing (CRC) at the University of Notre Dame; Angela Murillo, co-principal investigator for NSF CI Compass and assistant professor at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University, Indianapolis; and Charles Vardeman, knowledge engineering and artificial intelligence expert for NSF CI Compass and computational scientists at the CRC at the University of Notre Dame.

“During each meeting, the center’s leadership in FAIR Data gathers in the working group to meet with both regular and new meeting attendees to discuss topics specific to facilities’ needs, and the newest guidance from studies and governing agencies,” said Brower. "FAIR is the recognition that research data has value, and there is no reason to keep data if we can't find it again."

To find NSF CI Compass publications from the FAIR TWG, visit Zenodo - NSF CI Compass.

For information on how to join the FAIR TWG, visit: NSF CI Compass Working Groups.

About CI Compass

CI Compass is funded by the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering under grant number 2127548. Its participating research institutions include the University of Southern California, Indiana University, Texas Tech University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Utah.

To learn more about CI Compass, please visit ci-compass.org.

Contact: Christina Clark, Research Communications Specialist
CI Compass / Notre Dame Research / University of Notre Dame cclark26@nd.edu / 574.631.2665

Originally published by Christina Clark at ci-compass.org on June 11, 2025.