Funding of 7 new HMC projects confirmed
The Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration (HMC) has successfully concluded its sixth project call - the HMC Project Call 2025. We are pleased to announce that seven particularly compelling projects will receive a total of 2.715 million euros in funding over the next two years, of which 1.354 million euros come from the Helmholtz Initiative and Networking Fund (INF). The remaining funds will be provided by the participating Helmholtz Centres.
With 16 highly qualified project proposals submitted, the HMC Project Call has proven to be an established and attractive funding opportunity for innovations in the field of data management and its digital infrastructure. Both, the call and the projects, are also characterized by a focus on interdisciplinarity and collaboration among multiple Helmholtz Centers within a single project proposal. A total of 12 out of 18 centers are involved in the funded projects, with seven centers taking on project coordination and up to six centers participating in a single project.
Key aspects of the annual HMC Project Call include the practical challenges of documenting research data, improving the creation of high-quality metadata, and implementing the FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). The goal is to advance the comparability and reusability of research data - both within Helmholtz and in the international research landscape.
The seven projects launched in 2026 focus on several metadata-specific topics, including:
Further development of subject-specific and interdisciplinary platforms for harmonizing metadata, utilizing PIDs, and improving the extraction of selective data or visual descriptors from large image collections (data harvesting)
Further development of a subject-specific, instrumental database for integrating new data types from experimental setups
Establishment of a subject-specific network involving research, NGOs, politics, and industry to build semantic metadata and a digital infrastructure in the field of renewable energy
Integration of a robotics’ database into an AI-enhanced electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) for the adaptation and reuse of automated experiments
For more details on the newly funded projects and their objectives, please visit our overview of all HMC projects.
Background information:
With an annual HMC Call for Projects, HMC promotes the target-oriented development of tools and solutions for metadata handling. The projects serve as important use cases for the Helmholtz community, their results are integrated into HMC activities and are thus available to the entire Helmholtz Association. Projects can be funded for a maximum of 2 years and are financed with a maximum of €200,000 from the Helmholtz Association's Initiative and Networking Fund. Funded Helmholtz Centres must co-finance at least 50% of the respective project.
The Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration is one of five platforms of the Helmholtz Information & Data Science (HIDS) Framework. The aim of HMC is to enable the enrichment of research data through metadata in the various phases of its creation as well as to develop and implement concepts and services for this purpose.
