Mosbergen R1
1Wehi, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Rowland is a strategic leader in digital research infrastructure with 25+ years’ experience translating HPC, AI, data and cloud technologies into scalable research and industry services used by global communities. Known for building partnerships across researchers, national infrastructure providers and technology teams to deliver high-impact digital capability, Rowland provides strategic direction, inclusive leadership and scalable programs that accelerate research adoption and demonstrate measurable impact.
Rowland co-founded RSAA, RSAfrica, and RS Latin America, and established Equersa, the umbrella organisation supporting all three regional conferences. He also serves on the steering committee of the RSE Australia New Zealand Association.
Abstract:
Managing research data in multi-organisational, multi-omics environments is increasingly complex yet most existing systems are built for institutions, not researchers. REDMANE (REsearch Data Management & ANalysis Environment) is a lightweight, researcher-focused ecosystem that addresses this critical gap and may be ideal for universities and research institutes in Africa.
Designed with input from over 40 interns and research staff across clinical, molecular, and data science disciplines, REDMANE replicates the usability of modern library systems for research data. It will combine a flexible data registry with ingestion tools that deliver immediate value to researchers by simplifying curation, improving discoverability, and enabling long-term data retrieval across institutions.
Crucially, REDMANE highlights the growing need for international standards to support interoperability between these data portals. To unlock the full potential of federated research ecosystems, we must co-develop shared frameworks for authentication and authorisation, mapping unique identifiers between systems and making it easier to maintain and develop ecosystems that are fit-for-purpose. REDMANE is built with this future in mind, enabling researchers to plug into a broader, evolving network of interoperable tools and services.
Unlike platform-centric tools, REDMANE is domain-agnostic and scalable – capable of supporting legacy and incoming datasets in projects in the biomedical space. Its modular architecture supports diverse data portals (e.g., Omero, cBioPortal), enabling researchers to keep large datasets locally while cataloguing and accessing them via a shared metadata layer.
This architecture should also support other domains including Digital Humanities Arts and Social Sciences.
By aligning technical capability with real researcher needs, REDMANE demonstrates that uptake, not just delivery, is the key to sustainable RDM. This talk will present REDMANE’s design, use cases, and early implementation feedback, and invite collaboration to grow its open-source, community-driven future.
