The NFDI for Catalysis-Related Sciences (NFDI4Cat) consortium aims to support catalysis research in the digital age by establishing a sustainable, interoperable research data infrastructure. Catalysis is a highly interdisciplinary field with strategic relevance for science, industry, and society, playing a key role in areas such as the reduction of CO₂ emissions, sustainable chemical production, plastic waste valorisation, and hydrogen-based energy technologies.
A central objective of NFDI4Cat is to enable FAIR and reusable data practices across the diverse disciplines of catalysis by bridging theoretical and simulation-based approaches with experimental research. To achieve this, the consortium focuses on harmonising metadata standards, data formats, and semantic models, thereby facilitating a unified and interoperable view of homogeneous, heterogeneous, bio-, and electro-catalysis.
In its current project phase, NFDI4Cat places strong emphasis on the consolidation and expansion of user-oriented digital services, interoperable tools, and sustainable data infrastructures that support the entire research data lifecycle - from data generation and curation to storage, integration, analysis, and reuse. By making modern data science methods and scalable digital infrastructures accessible to the catalysis community, the consortium contributes to the realisation of actionable, data-driven research workflows, often referred to as “digital catalysis”, along the value chain from molecules to chemical processes.
The NFDI4Cat consortium brings together expertise from catalysis research with complementary competencies in data science, high-performance computing, and machine learning. Within this framework, the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), University of Stuttgart, contributes expertise in digital research infrastructures and semantic technologies. HLRS is actively involved in several task areas of the NFDI4Cat 2.0 consortium, particularly those focusing on ontology-driven research data management, tools and services lifecycle management, and data space technologies.
These activities are embedded in the overall structure of NFDI4Cat, which is organised into interconnected Task Areas (TAs). In particular, HLRS contributes to TA2: Foundations for Ontology-driven Research Data Management, TA3: Tools and Services Lifecycle Management, and TA4: Data Spaces Engine. These task areas are closely interlinked and jointly support the development, evaluation, and sustainable operation of interoperable digital services for catalysis research.
