From 15 to 19 September 2025, the PIP Summer School took place at the University of Bremen, organized by colleagues from Faculty 01 – Physics / Electrical Engineering. A total of 27 students from the fields of physics, electrical engineering, and space engineering – coming from various universities – participated in the five-day program. The goal of the Summer School was to inspire students to engage with space science, deepen their subject knowledge, and explore potential career paths in the space industry.
The program combined expert lectures, practical exercises, and opportunities for exchange, covering topics ranging from space exploration and aerospace engineering to interdisciplinary applications in space science.
FAIR Data You Can Touch: DSC Workshop
The Data Science Center (DSC) was represented by Sarah Büker and Annika Nolte as part of the DataNord project team. They led a four-hour interactive workshop entitled “Cosmic Bricks: Making Space Science Data FAIR with LEGO®”.
Through playful, hands-on activities, participants learned what the FAIR principles – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable – mean in practice and why sustainable research data management is particularly important in space science and the natural sciences. International collaborations, long-term missions, and large volumes of observational and simulation data make FAIR data a key foundation for transparent, reproducible, and reusable research.
Using LEGO® models, such as rockets or lunar rovers, abstract concepts like documentation, metadata, and reusability became tangible and easy to grasp. No prior knowledge of research data management was required; the workshop was explicitly designed for students at an early stage of their academic careers.
Strengthening Data Skills Early On
With this workshop, the DSC demonstrated how data skills can be integrated into educational formats at an early stage in a low-threshold and target-group-oriented way. For students in these disciplines, a basic understanding of research data management is an important component for future academic and industrial careers.
By contributing to the PIP Summer School, the DSC highlights its commitment to embedding data skills at an early stage of academic education. Workshops like this demonstrate the value of the interdisciplinary data competence team within the BMFTR-funded DataNord project: drawing on established concepts, broad experience, and interdisciplinary backgrounds, innovative training formats can be implemented quickly, tailored to specific audiences, and reused sustainably. In this way, the DSC plays a key role in equipping the University of Bremen’s research and teaching environment with essential data skills.
Interested in a workshop like this? Feel free to contact us. An overview of our workshop portfolio can be found here.
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If you have any questions, please contact:
Dr. Lena Steinmann
Coordinator Data Science Center & “DataNord”
Tel. +49 (421) 218 - 63941
E-mail: lena.steinmannprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
