CRC 1404

Research Programme

In the Collaborative Research Center 1404 “FONDA – Foundations of Workflows for Large-Scale Scientific Data Analysis”  more than 50 researchers jointly research innovative infrastructures for the large-scale analysis of scientific data sets. The CRC is highly interdisciplinary, embracing software engineering, distributed systems, algorithm engineering, data science, databases, bioinformatics, biomedical image analysis, material science, and satellite-based remote sensing. It centers on the concept of data analysis workflows (DAW) and aims to research new approaches to enhance DAW portability, adaptability, and dependability, by developing new languages, optimization techniques, provenance analysis algorithms, workflow compilers, and other components of distributed resource management systems. FONDA is a joint project of all Berlin universities and various other research institutions.

Promoting Gender Equality and Family Friendliness in CRC 1404

FONDA plans several activities to ensure a proper treatment of diversity-related issues, with a special focus on increasing the participation of female researchers at all career levels. This includes, for instance:

• Election of a gender equality commissioner with their own budget
• Mandatory courses in “unconscious bias in recruiting” for all PIs prior to job announcements
• International female fellowship program
• An extended PostDoc visiting program with agreed goals in terms of female participation
• Access to role models at all levels, starting from the guest program to the highly prestigious Mercator fellow program
• Support for WINS Adlershof (for female PhD students)
• Membership in METIS
• Goals in terms of diversity for the appointments of the two FONDA-associated W1 positions
• Family-friendly working environment
• Dedicated funding for supporting researchers with regard to gender-related issues.