LifeWatch ERIC
What is your core business?
We are a Research Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystems Research. We build Virtual Research Environments where scientists across Europe can digitally experiment and collaborate on research questions. Besides our Amsterdam office, LifeWatch ERIC has its main office in Sevilla, Spain, and a Service Center in Lecce, Italy.
The Amsterdam office of LifeWatch ERIC is called the Virtual Laboratory and Innovation Center. We offer innovative solutions for building virtual labs by implementing the latest developments in ICT research into the development and operation of services for scientists.
On what (tomorrow’s) question are you finding an answer?
Biodiversity is crucial to life on Earth. The variety of species is essential for medicine development, and at least 75% of our crops depend on pollination. Good management of ecosystems can mitigate climate change. The current decline in biodiversity is a serious societal challenge, and LifeWatch ERIC contributes to scientifically proven solutions to stop this decline. Ecosystems are complex communities of species and other factors such as soil and weather. Understanding this requires advanced modeling and simulation capacities and the ability to analyze large amounts of data from different angles. This is where a Research Infrastructure like LifeWatch ERIC comes in with its state-of-the-art Virtual Research Environments, workflow builders, and analytical tools.
Why did you choose LAB42?
We work closely with the Multi Scale Networked Systems (MSN) group in the Informatics Institute, connecting research to development and operations. Our staff is fully integrated and collaborates with this research group.
The high-level informatics research being done in LAB42, particularly in AI and Machine Learning, is a valuable resource for our team to find leads for new functionality and technical innovation.
What added value do you offer to the other residents in LAB42?
I suggest visiting our office (L3.16) or the MSN research group on the 5th floor for a chat. We do great things with Jupyter Notebooks and workflow builders in the cloud, not only for Biodiversity and Ecosystems research but also in other environmental science domains like atmospheric, marine, or geoscience research through international networks.
Check out this interesting publication about our main product, NaaVRE (Notebooks as a Virtual Research Environment), to learn what it can do for you.