December 2025 is the end of the first year of the LUMEN project! We still have two years ahead of us, but what has been accomplished so far is really impressive! I’m very proud to coordinate such a qualitative consortium with passionate partners, deeply committed to the project and to make things happen. Not only the work done, but also the way we all work together, in consensus, listening to each other, deciding collectively on the major aspects of the project, with a strong flexibility that allows us to adapt and to reorganise whenever needed. LUMEN is dealing with 4 very different scientific communities: SSH, Maths, Molecular Dynamics and Earth System Science. This is probably one of the major challenges: Being able to identify each specificity to respect the communities while simultaneously facilitating dialogue and interoperability between the people and between the tools. And I can say that this first year has been dedicated to this aspect, and it works well.
Another important aspect was to define the global architecture of what LUMEN will provide in more depth: the LUMEN Data Mesh. This architecture is not only technical, but it also includes governance aspects related to data sharing and interoperability. The architecture has been defined with a clear timeline in 2025, and more technical developments are expected for the year to come. In this context, we have seen the elaboration of the LUMIS platform, a never-before-seen tool that will provide support to build ontologies for any scientific community. This very complex work is yet another major output of the LUMEN project. 2025 also produced three “Inside EOSC” podcasts to showcase what is done, while considering the challenges and the opportunities. Because LUMEN is an INFRAEOSC project, meaning our outputs will be integrated into the EOSC Federation to support cross-disciplinarity and innovation in the European Research Area. In this perspective, important activities include identifying the technical aspects related to this integration with the EOSC Federation, and several collaborations with other INFRAEOSC projects have started this year.
A key aspect of LUMEN is its focus on co-design. The worst scenario of design consists of building tools without knowing what the needs of future users are. To counter this effect, we have put a lot of energy into organising workshops, interviews, and questionnaires to facilitate feedback and to get a strong understanding of the needs of the communities we serve. This helps the consortium to identify and build innovative tools for each community that are part of the global data mesh architecture. LUMEN conducted the workshop series “Learn, Connect, Innovate” from October to December – a total of 11 interactive online workshops were designed, placing researchers and co-creation at the centre of the process.
LUMEN is already well identified outside the project thanks to a strong branding, a large consortium and different communication channels that raise awareness amongst the EU community. In this context, LUMEN works closely, for example, with the project GRAPHIA. Both projects successfully co-organised the Innovation Prototyping Lab 2025 in Zagreb. During the IPL, we also had the pleasure of meeting in person and working together for three days to address some of the challenges we are currently facing. Finally, one of the key challenges of the LUMEN project is about the sustainability and the governance model of this very decentralised architecture. This first year set up the framework of this important question, and it will probably be one of the major milestones in 2026.
The +70 people involved in the project are doing a major work that has the potential to change several practices and to deeply improve collaborations between academic communities. 2026 will be mainly dedicated to the technical developments of the different components of LUMEN and to building a proper governance aligned with the values we promote, such as the strong involvement of the communities in it.
Lastly, let me deeply thank all the partners involved for their work, but more for the spirit in which they are doing it. Stay tuned! It’s just the beginning, and you will be surprised by the progress made in the next months!