Klaus Tochtermann confirmed for a further term of office on the board of the European Open Science Cloud

Kiel/Hamburg, 22 November 2023: Professor Klaus Tochtermann, Director of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, was unanimously elected to the eight-member Board of Directors of the European Open Science Cloud Association for a further three-year term of office on 21 November 2023. This impressive 100 per cent approval underscores the strong support of his European colleagues and sends a clear signal of his long-standing commitment to the Open Science movement. Klaus Tochtermann thus represents not only the German scientific community, but also a leading position in European science policy.

On 21 November 2023, more than 150 voting research institutions from all over Europe met to elect three members to the eight-member Board of Directors of the European Open Science Cloud Association. The EOSC Board of Directors implements the decisions of the General Assembly and is therefore the most important body in the European Science Cloud Association.

As one of a total of eight honorary board members, ZBW Director Klaus Tochtermann was elected for the second time for a term of office of three years with 100 percent of the votes.

Klaus Tochtermann is nationally and internationally active in the Open Science movement, specialising in research data management.

The Director of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics has been a member of the Scientific Senate of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) since 2022. He was a member of the Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII) for eight years until 2022. The Council had initiated the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) for Germany, in which the ZBW is also an active member of three NFDI consortia. After participating in the two High Level Expert Groups on the European Open Science Cloud set up by the European Commission from 2015 to 2018, he was elected to the board of the European Open Science Cloud Association for the first time in 2020.

As a driving force in the Open Science movement, Klaus Tochtermann initiated the Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science in 2012 and launched the international Open Science Conference in 2014, which has been held annually ever since.

Klaus Tochtermann expressed his pleasure at playing a key role in shaping developments in cross-disciplinary research data management in Europe in the coming years. “I am looking forward to the challenge of demonstrating how national research data infrastructures such as the NFDI can work successfully with the EOSC,” said the newly elected EOSC board member.

In addition to Klaus Tochtermann, the following people are on the board of the European Open Science Cloud Association: Marieluisa Lavitrano (UNIMIB / Italy), Suzanne Dumouchel (CNRS / France), Sarah Jones (GEANT / Netherlands), Ignacio Blanquer (UPV / Spain), Wilhelm Widmark (SU / Sweden), Bob Jones (CERN / Switzerland) and Sara Garavelli (CSC / Finland). The EOSC is represented externally by the President Karel Luyben (CESAER / Belgium). The Secretary General of the European Open Science Cloud Association is Ute Gunsenheimer.

Press photos Professor Klaus Tochtermann

Video statement by Klaus Tochtermann

About the association “European Open Science Cloud”(EOSC):

The “European Open Science Cloud” (EOSC) initiative brings together existing data infrastructures in Europe. The aim is to provide researchers with a virtual environment in which they can store, manage, analyse and reuse research data across scientific boundaries. The EOSC Association was founded on 29 July 2020 as a legal entity to steer this initiative. More than 250 research organisations and research infrastructures from across Europe are members of the EOSC Association. URL: www.eosc.eu/