From ASTERICS
Astronomy ESFRI & Research Infrastructure Cluster
The H2020 project bringing together the astronomy, astrophysics and astroparticle physics communities to support and accelerate the implementation of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) telescopes, to enhance their performance beyond the current state-of-the-art, and to see them interoperate as an integrated, multi-wavelength and multi-messenger facility.
The OBELICS work programme.
The Machine Learning developments in OBELICS
To ESCAPE
European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle physics ESFRI research infrastructures
ESCAPE aims to address the Open Science challenges shared by ESFRI facilities (SKA, CTA, KM3Net, EST, ELT, HL-LHC, FAIR) as well as other pan-European research infrastructures (CERN, ESO, JIVE) in astronomy and particle physics.
Establishing a single collaborative cluster of next generation ESFRI facilities in the area of astronomy- and accelerator-based particle physics in order to implement a functional link between the concerned ESFRI projects and European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
On 19 June 2020, the CERN Council announced that it had unanimously updated the strategy intended to guide the future of particle physics in Europe within the global landscape (the documents are available here). The updated recommendations highlight the scientific impact of particle physics and its technological, societal and human capital.
And among the recommendations, as per the Deliberation Document on the 2020 update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics:
« … There is a need for strong community-wide coordination for computing and software R&D activities, and for the development of common coordinating structures that will promote coherence in these activities, long-term planning and effective means of exploiting synergies with other disciplines and industry.
Some recently initiated examples are the HEP Software Foundation addressing the common computing and software challenges related to particle physics, and ESCAPE (European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle physics ESFRI research infrastructures) exploring the synergies in the areas of astronomy, astroparticle and accelerator-based particle physics. »
- My communication about ESCAPE given at 107th Plenary ECFA meeting.
ESCAPE in EOSC-Future
The ESCAPE project is building a virtual research environment (VRE) for the Astronomy, Astro-Particle, Particle, and Nuclear Physics communities, as a prototype of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). It is intended that the developments of tools and services made in ESCAPE will become part of the EOSC implementation. The mechanism for that integration will be the EOSC-Future project, where the science drivers of various disciplines come from the Science Clusters of European research infrastructures involved in the project, including ESCAPE.
- Dark Matter: to bring together on a common science platform, the data and analysis software of collider, direct and indirect detection experiments involved in ESCAPE;
- Extreme Universe: to implement a sustainable platform for multi-messenger astronomy, to enable the use of probes from telescopes and detectors from across the spectrum, and including Gravitational Waves, neutrinos, and cosmic rays.
SCIENCE CLUSTERS’ STATEMENT
The Science Clusters are EU domain-based collaborative initiatives : ENVRI-FAIR (Environment and Earth Sciences), EOSC-LIFE (Biomedical Sciences), ESCAPE (Astronomy and Particle Physics), PANOSC (Light and Neutron Facilities), SSHOC (Social Sciences and Humanities). They were launched in 2019 to link ESFRI and other world-class Research Infrastructures (RIs) to EOSC.
The five Science Clusters have built a coherent and synergistic cooperative scheme.
The Science Clusters have published their 2nd position statement document and presented during a dedicated workshop.
Online on 11 June 2021, this workshop aims at addressing potential sustainable actions to consolidate the cluster work programmes as well as presenting to the European Commission, ESFRI and the EOSC Association a longer-term vision to support the uptake of Open Science by the global scientific community.
ESCAPE to the Future
The ESCAPE Final Event took between 25 and 26 October 2022, at the Royal Belgium Institute of Natural Sciences, located in Brussels.
The event was open to all. We had 217 individuals that registered to join us (109 physically in Brussels and 108 remotely) from 23 countries, to discover and provide their inputs to strengthen and share open science best practices.
As the ESCAPE project is coming to its end, the members of the cluster share their results and achievements, and discuss the future of the ESCAPE Collaboration. ESCAPE to the Future is dedicated to present ESCAPE services, achievements, future challenges and good practices.
ESCAPE becomes an “Open Collaboration”
A new Open Collaboration Agreement, publicly announced during the “ESCAPE for the Future” event and signed by all the Directors of all the research infrastructure partners, takes effect from January 2023. It continues the ESCAPE programme, its synergies and fosters the joint work of all five domain-based Science Clusters involved in the implementation of EOSC. The agreement is also open to further research infrastructures to join.
ESCAPE to the Future Event Recommits ESCAPE Partners in Collaboration for Open Science
The ESCAPE Open Collaboration first meeting
The plenary talk about the ESCAPE future perspectives at CHEP 2023 conference
ET in ESCAPE:
On Firday 7 July the ESCAPE Board approved the request from Eistein Telescope collabroation to join ESCAPE.
Horizon Europe
The five Science Clusters domain-based collaborations have successfully supported cooperative actions concerning:
- the improved access of researchers to data, tools and resources, leading to new insights and innovation for data-driven science both within and beyond the context of the domains in which the clusters are rooted;
- the creation of a cross-border open innovation environment for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data management for economies of scale, to develop synergies and rise the efficiency and productivity of researchers through open-science standards and thematic services;
- the enhanced co-developments to foster the cross-domain interoperability central to the EOSC goal.
A dedicated landing web-page of the five Science Cluster is now deployed.
New cooperative projects within the Horizon Europe programme have started in 2024:
OSCARS – Open Science Clusters’ Action for Research & Society supporting two activities:
- Consolidation of the Science Cluster approaches between the RI communities, where ESCAPE focuses on Data Lake, VRE and training. As part of this activity, we were also asked to study and implement an ESCAPE “community-based competence centre”.
- Demonstrate and pilot the use of EOSC resources by multiple research communities through cross-RI and/or cross-domain open science projects and services, by running open calls with cascading grants.
EVERSE – European Virtual InstitutE for Research Software Excellence aims at creating a framework for research software and code excellence, collaboratively designed and championed by the research communities, in pursuit of building a European network of Research Software Quality and setting the foundations of a future Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence.
The Science Clusters’ 3rd position statement document
After five years of collaborative efforts, including interactions with the European Commission, EOSC Association, ESFRI-EOSC task force, and e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG), a fresh articulation of the Science Clusters’ vision for the future is needed.
The Science Clusters, ENVRI, EOSC-Life, ESCAPE, PaNOSC and SSHOC are far from being a homogeneous group. They are made up of multiple and diverse RIs and research communities that vary in the approach, FAIRness and maturity of their data, services and scientific research. Their diversity has not prevented them from cooperating together, aligning approaches in terms of data-intensive research requirements and practices, bridging cultural divides, exploring synergies and building a common vision about the operationalisation of Open Research in Europe.
More about EOSC and the implication of Open Science and FAIRness of data in Particle Physics and Astrophysics can be found here