Research Projects

The GWDG also conducts its own research and is collaborating with numerous researchers nationally and internationally.

The projects benefit from more than 50 years of GWDG’s experience as an IT provider for scientific institutions and as an independent research institution, that focusses on Practical and Applied Computer Science. In general, we develop methods and tools for computationally or data intensive science in diverse research fields as well as digital infrastructures for collaborative research.

Current Projects   đź”—

AI-NET-PROTECT The primary objective of the AI-NET research program is to Accelerate digital transformation in Europe by Intelligent NETwork automation at each network segment, i.e., edge, metro, core and data centers.
BIRD Digital Education Space (German: Bildungsraum Digital, BIRD) is the first of four prototypes for a future national education platform in Germany. It enables the testing of structures for data exchange, the interoperability of different platform types and the implementation of standards. With the planned National Education Platform, the digitization push in the education sector will be accelerated, supported nationwide and professionalized.
Device-Edge-Cloud Intelligent Collaboration framEwork (DECICE) The DECICE project was created in response to an EU Horizon research and innovation programme calling for the development of a cognitive cloud system. Such a system should be able to integrate cloud, HPC and edge resources and optimize their usage. Furthermore, machine learning based schedulers will automatically optimize the placement of workloads across the heterogeneous hardware landscape managed by it. As part of this project, challenges must be solved regarding the integration of distinct hardware architectures into a unified platform as well as building a process for gathering metrics and finding near optimal scheduling decisions in a reasonable amount of time while also scaling to thousands of nodes across multiple data centers and countries.
GenePaint Under the umbrella of GenePaint, scientists have access to the world’s first comprehensive overview of the spatial and temporal activity of all known genes (gene expression) of an entire mammalian organism at any given moment in its development on the example of the mouse genome. By means of this data, it is possible, for example, to determine candidate genes for genetic and complex diseases. One of the project’s long-term goals is to build a European online service, “European Database of Gene Expression“.
Humanities Data Centre (HDC) The main tasks of the HDC are long-term preservation of research data (eg critical editions, multimedia objects or 3D models) and, if legally possible, their provision for subsequent use. Important projects in the field of humanities, such as DARIAH and TextGrid, in which the GWDG is also involved, already use considerable data in their research environments, which require a joint research data service. Therefore, the HDC is a central data interface for virtual research environments in the humanities.
KI-Servicezentrum fĂĽr sensible und kritische Infrastrukturen (KISSKI) The goal of KISSKI is to establish an AI-servicecenter that provides everything necessary for developing and deploying AI based solutions. This includes data via prepared trainings data and pre-trained models, expertise via training, consulting and support, hardware including HPC systems and specialized hardware as well as infrastructure using Kubernetes to enable serverless, AI-as-a-Service deployments.
Kooperatives Langzeitarchiv (koala) Since 2005 the GWDG has been a cooperation partner of the “Deutsche Nationalbibliothek” (German National Library) in the field of digital preservation. The DNB is mandated by the Law „Gesetz über die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek“ (DNBG) to collect, index, record and archive german publications. As part of this partnership, the software “koala” was developed by the GWDG.
Memory-Centric Storage for Exascale (MCSE) Our goal in this project is to remove the separation of main memory and non-volatile memory and bring them together in a distributed computing system under a unified interface so that different classes of storage media can be used flexibly in HPC workflows.
MINE MINE is a service which offers access to various text resources and their extracted knowledge. Additionally, it also offers a workspace for users to run their analytics workflows. The service is currently under development and is a joint project between the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (SUB) and the GWDG.
NHR-Container Project We see container environments as a valuable tool, on the one hand, to allow users to to create their own software environments and to decouple them from the system environment, and also as a basis for easy migration between simple migration between the NHR centers. The goal of the project in the first phase is the development of portable container descriptions that can be used by users as a basis for their own containers and can be used at several centers. Building on this, the establishment of a common reepository for tested descriptions (or ready-made containers). The Developing cluster-on-demand approaches for HPDA using Kubernetes, the most widely used solution for container orchestration (deployment, scalability, monitoring) across multiple nodes, is the goal of a 2nd phase.
Open Character Recognition Development (OCR-D) With the Union Catalogue of Books of the 16th-18th century (VD 16, VD 17, VD 18) published in the German-speaking countries, a retrospective national bibliography of early modern writings from the German-speaking countries in being compiled. In order to facilitate research access to these texts, great concerted efforts have been and are being undertaken to make fully digitised copies or key pages for the recorded titles available in digital form.
SSHOC The EU-funded SSHOC (Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud) project aims to encourage secure environments for sharing and using sensitive and confidential data. The project contributes to the European Open Science agenda and the realisation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Finished projects   đź”—

eLabour The BMBF-funded project eLabour conducts qualitative research in the field of social sciences. For this purpose, already collected study data from various social science research institutions are evaluated under new research questions. Since this involves research data from over 40 years, it is available in a wide variety of media: as documents in paper form, as audio interviews, and in numerous digital written formats. In the eLabour project, a central digital platform is now being set up to capture and enable simplified access to this research data in digitized form. This platform is intended - while guaranteeing data protection - to enable collaborative work with the research documents in a virtual research infrastructur
GFBio The project is a joined cooperation of the key players providing environmentally related biological data and services in Germany Environmental and biological research challenges related to the Earth’s ecosystems and climate dynamics is one of the global societal challenges. It runs in the second funding phase since 2015. The importance and the complexity of the problems to be solved demands increased collaboration and knowledge exchange. Biological data are currently distributed over many media in inconsistently formats. So it is not easy to share them. Therefore a coherent infrastructure to improve scientific data integration and preservation is indispensable.
jointly The joint project JOINTLY supports OER players in the development and dissemination of their open educational materials and organizes knowledge transfer and cooperation activities. For this concepts, contents and solutions, which were developed within project-internal co-operations, are discussed and evaluated by experts. The project promotes the acquisition and exploitation of proven knowledge for OER or IT practice. Webinars, seminars and workshops are offered for the transfer of knowledge. One focus is on advice from experts in the fields of law, production, didactics and computer science. In addition, the project will jointly develop OER-beneficial software tools as well as labor and distribution instruments. For experts and decision-makers from the fields of education, politics and society, a specific discourse platform for the exchange shall be established.
SFB 990 The SFB 990 aims at the investigation of transformation processes in tropical lowland rain forests. For the extraction of wood and other forest products as well as the cultivation of food, feed, fiber and energy plants, rainforests are cleared in many tropical areas. However, the consequences of deforestation and the role of the resulting agricultural use systems for the preservation of biodiversity and other ecological and socio-economic functions have hardly been explored so far. Synergies and conflicts between different ecological and socioeconomic functions are essential research objects. The interplay of agricultural and nature conservation is also of interest. The project therefore aims to lay the foundations for the development and implementation of sustainable agricultural systems.