Spotlight on: Shuai Wang
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?
My PhD has to do with knowledge management. The curiosity naturally extended to data management. I also worked as a scientific engineer on a project to assess data management in Social Science and Humanities (SSH) communities with Angelica. There, I received training from the GO FAIR Foundation and learned about FAIR and related resources. I was also a part-time data steward of the computer science department at the VU, where policy-making and management became important. Most recently, I joined Pedro Hernández Serrano’s RDM team at Maastricht University to work as a software steward. Seatbelt fastened and ready for the ride!
What is an activity/task of your role that you find yourself looking forward to?
I am a person who is triggered by challenges and the unknown. The part that I like the most is the complexity where data, software, people, infrastructure, policy, and technology all come into a complex nested problem. I find it exciting that a case can change its shape as you look at it with different people from different angles. I often feel a lack of knowledge, but I’m very lucky to be supported by experts. One activity that I look forward to the most would be interpreting FAIR principles in different scenarios. I’m often surprised by how drastically the mapped actions could change as you switch between faculties, communities, projects, and researchers.
What is something unexpected that you can offer help with, if a colleague reaches out to you?
I support both software management and data management. Although it has not been long since I started my new job, I’ve been accumulating knowledge on RDM-related software, tools, platforms, etc. A specialty of mine will be providing advice on the use of software for data processing. I can also help with grant applications for data infrastructures.
What do you think your community of research data professionals is missing?
The big picture: some knowledge and vision about data in the entire RDM ecosystem. The role that data/metadata plays can vary in different projects. I think it can take some time for a data steward to have a good understanding of the roles they play at different stages and how they are related to or interact with computing infrastructures, software, data repositories, and data archives.
What is a topic you would want to collaborate on with others?
The assessment of FAIRness and AI-readiness of data infrastructures.
How would you like to see your current field of work evolve in the next 5 years?
First, I can imagine that a lot of tasks will be automated by AI agents and many jobs that we are doing about data processing, analysis, and publishing will be shifted to the hands of specialised and well-trained agents. This calls for steps towards AI-readiness in data infrastructure. Imagine a researcher speaks to an agent like Siri, “Hi Steward. Clean my data and publish it on the most relevant data repository. Don’t forget to use the right structured vocabulary in my metadata and make it available to all data portals in the domain”.
Second, I would want to see all data infrastructures being transparent by specifying what services, tools, software components, licences, and data storage they are using. It would help researchers choose what data infrastructure and related digital resources to use. It would also make it easier to monitor the development and properties of the infrastructure. Thus, a structured documentation instrument is demanded.
Get in touch with Shuai on LinkedIn and Website
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