About Us

Background

NFDI4Microbiota is a consortium within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) that focuses on managing, standardizing, and sharing microbiological and microbiome-related research data. It aims to improve data accessibility, interoperability, and reproducibility for researchers working with microbiota across various domains, including health, agriculture, and the environment.
The vision of the NFDI4Microbiota consortium is that researchers in microbiology (including bacteriology, virology, protistology, mycology and parasitology) can translate research data easily into a deep understanding of microbial species and their interactions on a molecular level. To reach this our is to be the central hub in Germany for supporting the microbiology community with access to data, analysis services, data/metadata standards and training.
NFDI4Microbiota is a collaborative effort driven by 10 partner institutions and supported by over 50 participating organizations, including leading universities and non-university research institutions. Our partner institutions play a key role in shaping the consortium’s strategy, infrastructure, and services. They bring together expertise from microbiology, bioinformatics, data management, and infrastructure development to create a sustainable ecosystem for microbiome research data.
Beyond our core partners, we are strengthened by a diverse network of participating institutions, ranging from top-tier universities to renowned research centers. These institutions contribute through research, development, and community engagement, ensuring that our solutions meet the needs of the broader scientific community.
Together, we are building a robust and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data infrastructure to advance microbiome research across disciplines following our motto: Making Microbiology Data FAIR and Open.

Aims and objectives

The aims and objectives of NFDI4Microbiota are:

• Generate a broad awareness of the importance of the FAIR principles, open science and reproducible research in the microbiological community and drive a cultural change toward their widespread adaptation.
• Equip the community with the required skills and literacy for efficient and data-driven microbial research by providing a comprehensive training program.
• Increase the value of other NFDIs by adding microbial expertise and connecting the national and international microbiology communities.
• Improve the research process by mobilizing, structuring and linking available data, information and knowledge related to microorganisms.
• Support high-quality research data management by introducing professional data stewards into the microbiological research process.
• Increase the value of data by standardizing and systematically collecting rich metadata and building tools for querying.
• Make research more reproducible by standardizing data processing and analysis.
• Provide computational tools and infrastructure for the translation of data into new knowledge.
• Provide central information hubs tailored to address the needs of the microbial research community and its sub-fields.
• Continuously adapt the solutions provided to meet the future needs of our microbiology community.