STARDAST – STewardship and Recognition for DAta Science Talent

Project Overview

STARDAST: STewardship and Recognition for DAta Science Talent aims to establish a sustainable, cross-sector European ecosystem for professional data stewardship, supporting the implementation of FAIR data practices, Open Science, and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). 

The project addresses the growing need for skilled data stewards across research infrastructures, academia, industry, and policy environments by developing harmonised training frameworks, professional recognition pathways, and interoperable stewardship practices. Through six interconnected work packages, STARDAST will support mentoring, peer-learning, Train-the-Trainer programmes, competence centres, and stewardship-as-a-service models to strengthen FAIR and Open Science implementation across Europe. 

The project builds on existing European initiatives such as Skills4EOSC, FAIR-IMPACT, EOSC-Future, OSCARS, and EOSC-Life, while contributing to EOSC interoperability, policy alignment, and long-term institutional adoption of FAIR and Open Science practices. 

Consortium 

The STARDAST consortium brings together 19 organisations from research infrastructures, universities, international organisations, industry, and SMEs across Europe. 

The consortium combines expertise across life sciences, healthcare, particle physics, linguistics, digital humanities, biodiversity research, FAIR data management, Open Science, and EOSC governance. Key partners include EMBL, CERN, CLARIN ERIC, DARIAH, Euro-BioImaging ERIC, EATRIS ERIC, AstraZeneca, Merck, and several leading European universities and research institutes. 

EATRIS’ role in the project 

EATRIS contributes to STARDAST as the healthcare and translational medicine infrastructure partner, supporting FAIR and Open Science implementation across the healthcare domain. 

EATRIS contributes expertise in data stewardship, FAIR-aligned infrastructures, training, and institutional quality initiatives, while also supporting EOSC-related activities and stewardship competence framework development. The organisation contributes practical experience with FAIR and EOSC-aligned tools and platforms, including MOTBX, and supports the development of sustainable institutional stewardship models and Open Science practices.