Semantic x-Lab: How HELIPORT and ALAMEDA Teams are Joining Forces to Improve Knowledge Acquisition from Lab Resources

In modern scientific research, the efficient management and integration of data from various laboratory resources is of crucial importance. The collaborative HMC-funded project ‘Semantic x-Lab’ is an initiative with the aim to improve knowledge acquisition by combining the advanced platform HELIPORT (HELmholtz ScIentific Project WORkflow PlaTform) and the results of the ALAMEDA (A Scalable Multi-Domain Metadata Management Platform) project.The goal of the Semantic x-Lab project is to interlink information from HELIPORT and ALAMEDA, make it explorable, and even discover knowledge that was previously considered in a different context or research field, in order to generate new insights. The outcome of the project will be a distributed knowledge graph involving laboratory resources and large-scale facilities in different research domains. We work with our laboratory partners in a user-centered co-design process. Use cases are defined collaboratively and feedback on the use of the knowledge graph is continuously incorporated into the development process.Semantic x-Lab exemplifies how the outcomes of previous successful HMC projects can be reused to launch new collective efforts. This presentation will explore the methods used to bring the platforms together, the anticipated challenges in doing so, and the expected benefits for the scientific community. Semantic x-Lab can serve as a model for integrating different data management systems to promote more effective and FAIR-compliant research practices and to discover new insights into previously unknown relationships.HELIPORT is a data management solution designed to provide a FAIR overview of all components and steps of the research experiment. It integrates documentation, workflows, related publications, proposal management, electronic lab notebooks, software repositories and other data sources, and facilitates the automatic exchange of relevant metadata throughout the entire lifecycle of the experiment.ALAMEDA builds upon HELIPORT and extends it with a focus on use cases from the earth and environment research field. It covers five main categories of metadata: observations and measurements, samples and data history, sensors and devices, methods and processing, and environmental properties.The project is carried out by a multi-disciplinary team. We envisage a broad usage in different research fields and the generation of cross-domain insights.