Work Programme
Engineering research is highly diverse, but many data management challenges occur across disciplines. Rather than organising the consortium around individual engineering fields, NFDI4ING structures its work around recurring research methods (“archetypes”) and cross-cutting solutions that benefit the entire engineering community.
This approach allows domain-specific requirements to be addressed while ensuring that successful methods, services and standards can be transferred across engineering disciplines.
NFDI4ING’s Archetypes
The archetypes represent recurring patterns of engineering research. Whether researchers work in civil engineering, mechanical engineering or materials science, they often face similar methodological challenges: for example conducting experiments, developing research software, managing simulation workflows or reusing heterogeneous datasets. Each archetype develops solutions tailored to these characteristic workflows and validates them together with the research community. For more details, visit our Archetypes section.
Overarching Solutions
While the archetypes address method-specific research workflows, the Overarching Solutions provide the shared infrastructure and services that connect them. They ensure that solutions developed in one archetype can be adopted across the consortium and integrated into the wider NFDI ecosystem. The Overarching Solutions are cross-cutting activities that support and integrate all archetypes.
TES
Training, education and standards for FAIR engineering research.
SKG
Semantic metadata and knowledge graphs for interoperability.
FIS
Federated infrastructure for accessing distributed research data.
CPT
Copilot – AI-assisted tools supporting engineering research workflows.
Outreach & Community Engagement
Outreach and community engagement is a joint task across all NFDI4ING task areas, coordinated by the NFDI4ING administrative office. It facilitates the exchange between NFDI4ING and the engineering sciences community by communicating NFDI4ING results, services, and activities to the community and, in turn, incorporating community requirements, demands, and feedback into the work of NFDI4ING.
From innovation to consolidation
During its first funding period (2020-2025), NFDI4ING focused on developing new concepts and services together with the community. In the second funding period starting in October 2025, the emphasis shifts towards consolidating successful services, improving interoperability, strengthening integration with Base4NFDI and EOSC, and making mature services broadly available to engineering researchers.
Coordination through Clusters
The work programme is coordinated through four thematic clusters that foster collaboration and identify synergies across related Task Areas. More information on the role of the clusters is available on the Governance page.