RWTH: Start of the “FAIR-Data Spaces” project

The three-year FAIR Data Spaces project, which is financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, has now started with the participation of RWTH.


The federated secure data infrastructure Gaia-X and the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) are developing a common, cloud-based data room for industry and research in compliance with the FAIR principles. FAIR stands for findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable and means to share data in a findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable way.

The project creates the roadmap for the cooperation between the two initiatives, clarifies ethical and legal framework conditions for the exchange of data between science and industry, develops common technical bases and demonstrates the use of Gaia-X technologies for the provision and use of research data along the FAIR Principles in various scientific disciplines and industries.

The NFDI Association and leading universities in NFDI consortia represent the application domain of science. The business-oriented Gaia-X side is represented by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and Atos as representatives of the companies involved in Gaia-X. The project is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT and the coordination by the National Research Data Infrastructure Association (NFDI) eV

In addition to the IT Center of RWTH Aachen University, other partners are the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and System Technology ISST, the Justus Liebig University of Gießen, the TIB – Leibniz Information Center for Technology and Natural Sciences, the University of Cologne and the University of Leipzig , FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructures GmbH, the Heidelberg University Hospital, the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory EMBL, the Philipps University of Marburg, the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster who have favourited ZBW – Leibniz Information Center for Economics, Atos.