HMC Project Kick-Off: Operando4NeXus

24.03.2026

Last week the Operando4NeXus project, funded through our HMC project call 2025, kicked off in the spring sunshine of Berlin. The kick-off meeting brought together a diverse collection of stakeholders, including Helmholtz partners, NFDI consortia, and international representatives of the NeXus advisory committee (NIAC); to discuss lessons learned from previous community endeavors, hopes and aspirations for Operando4NeXus as the project rolls out in the coming two years.

Operando4NeXus addresses a key challenge in the current data landscape: while the NeXus data format is widely adopted and highly successful within its domain, it offers only limited mechanisms for interoperability with external standards and vocabularies. The project therefore aims to extend and complement NeXus in a way that enables richer integration with existing metadata standards and supports FAIR data principles, particularly interoperability.

A particular focus lies on use cases around in-situ (operando) experiments, which often combine multiple techniques and where the need for interoperability is particularly acute.

This requirement was nicely showcased in a presentation from the SECoP@HMC project which finished in October 2024. FAIRmat underlined the requirements analysis via their considerable expertise of working with NeXus and the NIAC to the table. Their presentation illustrated how community-driven standardisation, combined with practical tooling, can significantly enhance the usability and impact of research data.

Operando4NeXus builds on this momentum by bringing together expertise from multiple institutions, including HZB, HZDR, FZJ, KIT, DESY, PSI, and ESS; and NFDI consortia including FAIRmat and DAPHNE4NFDI to collaborate on the problem.

In the coming two years, the project will focus on developing interoperable metadata solutions, fostering alignment between communities, and contributing to a more connected and FAIR research data landscape.

The project team is now beginning its work and we look forward to following its progress.