Spotlight on: Karolis Cremers

Every other week, the Thematic DCCs and the Data Steward Interest Group (DSIG) put the spotlight on one research data steward working in the Netherlands, to stimulate knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer learning.

What drew you towards the research data management field?

I’ve had multiple internships at the LUMC Biosemantics group. It is only natural to involve FAIR in your projects there. There is a huge potential in making data FAIR; less time needed to collect and combine data allows for quicker and statistically stronger hypothesis testing. Growing up, I saw a lot of media involving a better future that involved automation of the boring or annoying tasks in our lives. I hope to play a part in developing this future and accelerate the improvement of human well-being.

What is an activity/task of your role that you find yourself looking forward to?

I’m currently on a project that tries to take the first steps in building internal FAIR infrastructure. This includes automating the publishing of metadata in the Health-RI National Health Data Catalogue. It’s a big challenge, that may take a while to complete, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the end result in action.

What is something unexpected that you can offer help with if a colleague reaches out to you?

I’m always available to puzzle a problem together! People say I’m good at connecting dots that they haven’t thought about yet. This might give you a shortcut to what you need or give you a longer path that might be easier to travel. I feel like a lot of projects have an overlap that can be exploited by either matching the demand and supply of expertise or at least seeing a different perspective on the problem.

What do you think your community of research data professionals is missing?

We must become better at documenting our own work and reduce the learning curve of data management. Just like how the stereotype exists that medical doctors are bad at maintaining their own health, we’re also not the best at describing our own work. We need to fight the outward focus and see how we can make our own work FAIR for humans that join the field. (Myself included)

What is a topic you would want to collaborate on with others?

I would love to collaborate with people on tools that improve the ease of implementing good data stewardship practices and FAIR principles. I'm not the best with building UI's but I really feel that a lot of the work that has to be done to FAIRify your data could become drag-and-drop based.

How would you like to see your current field of work evolve in the next 5 years?

I would like to see the field of life sciences adopt a standard of “living” review articles or dashboards that rerun statistical analysis and hypothesis tests when data that is within scope is published. This would speed up the path from basic science to the clinic and put your own results directly within its context once published.

Get in touch with Karolis via LinkedIn or Github.

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