MaRDI

Mathematical research data is vast, complex and multifaceted. It emerges within mathematical sciences but also in other scientific areas such as physics, chemistry, life sciences and the Arts. Standardised formats, data interoperability and application programming interfaces need to be developed to ensure the ease of use of data across broad disciplines.

With this in mind, the Mathematical Research Data Initiative (MaRDI) is being established as the consortia initiative of mathematical science. Its mission is to:

1. develop a robust Mathematical Research Data Infrastructure that would be useful within mathematics and other disciplines as well as non-scientific fields.
2. set standards and confirmable workflows for certified Mathematical Research Data and
3. provide services to both the mathematical and wider scientific community.

All of which is essential in creating and establishing collaborative platforms crucial for knowledge dissemination, quality control and scientific discourse.

MaRDI’s Vision:
Building a community that embraces a FAIR data culture and research workflow through the sustainable realization of MaRDI findings.

The Task Area (TA) 4 for interdisciplinary mathematics, with a focus on the challenges of interdisciplinary workflows, is led by the University of Stuttgart with the Institute for Applied Analysis and Numerical Simulation (IANS), whereby EXC 2075 "Data-driven simulation science" is also involved. The TA4 is organised along case studies that represent the entire breadth of mathematical applications, e.g. from engineering sciences to theoretical and bio-chemistry to the digital humanities. The University of Stuttgart/IANS is responsible for the case studies in the fields of engineering sciences, materials sciences and ultrahigh performance computing, which also includes networking with other NFDIs (here: MatWerk and NFDI4Ing) and research associations (here: SimTech). The aim is to define typical workflows from the case studies for the respective area of application of mathematics, from which further insights can be gained with regard to the mathematical models, algorithms and data used. In addition to a presentation of the workflows on the MaRDI portal for the purpose of documentation, these are to serve as an analytical basis for a model database, which will be realised as an ontology/knowledge graph, and designed to be interoperable with the ontologies of the other TAs and those of the other NFDIs. Here, the University of Stuttgart, i.e. IANS in close cooperation with FoKUS, takes the leading role in the ontology design. For the University of Stuttgart, this means that researchers outside of core mathematics can use the model database to research the mathematical foundations of their work, find links and document their research processes accordingly.

In addition, the MaRDI project is working on automated metadata capture, i.e. a way to automatically extract metadata from research data at the point of origin and play them into the DaRUS research data repository along with the data itself, as well as on the representation of mathematical formulae in the description fields of DaRUS. These developments will later be available to all users of DaRUS.