Kicking off STARDAST

Euro-BioImaging joined partners from across Europe on 29. & 30. September 2026 at the official kick-off meeting for STARDAST, a new Horizon Europe project dedicated to professionalising data stewardship and advancing FAIR and Open Science practices.

Gallery: STARDAST consortium at the kick-off meeting in Heidelberg and online. Image Credit for images 2-4: Massimo del Prete/EMBL Photolab

Coordinated by EMBL, STARDAST aims to build a sustainable, cross-sector ecosystem for professional data stewardship across Europe, supporting Horizon Europe's EOSC Association objectives. The project will develop a cross-disciplinary curriculum for data stewards, strengthen data steward skills and career pathways and pilot stewardship models across research, education, and industry.

'It was inspiring to explore the important role of data stewards across partners within Europe and now we're ready to start the project work'

Isabel Kemmer, FAIR Image Data Steward at Euro-BioImaging

Within the project, Euro-BioImaging is leading activities on steward upskilling and community building while also spearheading cascading grant activities for staff exchanges and secondments. We will also contribute to the analysis of the data stewardship professional landscape, shape communication and outreach efforts, support the consolidation of modular curricula for data stewards, and strengthen connections with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) ecosystem.

We are thrilled to join a consortium whose partners bring diverse expertise in data stewardship, making this also a valuable opportunity for learning and knowledge exchange. As Euro-BioImaging, we look forward to helping address our communities' data challenges by delivering training, community building, communication and professional frameworks for data stewards in imaging and across domains. We can't wait to move forward with this work together and share outputs as soon as they become available. Stay tuned!