TDCC-LSH FAIR Fellowship Programme: Information Flyer

The TDCC-LSH FAIR Fellowship Programme is a key initiative within the Thematic Digital Competence Centre for Life Sciences and Health (TDCC-LSH), aimed at strengthening FAIR data management expertise across Dutch life sciences and health research organizations. The programme contributes to addressing priority challenges identified in the TDCC-LSH roadmap for 2021–2022, helping to harmonize and improve digital practices at a national level.

In 2025, a national cohort of FAIR LSH fellows will be installed, drawn from Dutch universities and university medical centers. The fellowship provides personalized coaching from expert FAIR data professionals across diverse domains, including biodiversity, genomics, rare diseases, medical informatics, microbial data, bioimaging, and plant phenotyping. Each fellow brings a personal use case and will work collaboratively with experts and other fellow in the cohort to develop solutions and resources that support FAIR implementation in the LSH domain. Fellows will also participate in peer learning and structured training sessions designed to strengthen their capabilities, and they are expected to implement and disseminate the outputs of their work both within their home institutions and at a national level. Participating organizations receive funding (0.2 FTE for one year) to enable their fellows to dedicate time to the programme, and employers commit to supporting training and dissemination activities.

The project officially started on April 1, 2025, with the fellowship cohort beginning on December 1, 2025, for a duration of one year. A kick-off meeting will be held on November 27, 2025, at Health-RI in Utrecht. The programme is coordinated by Carla Strubbia (Health-RI), with Fieke Schoots (Health-RI) leading training and capacity-building activities. Coaches and experts from leading LSH research institutions guide the fellows throughout the programme, ensuring that the training and outputs are relevant and practical.

This publication is part of the TDCC-LSH network project (file number ICT.TDCC.003) and is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under the Dutch Implementation Plan for Investments in Digital Research Infrastructure (2019). For more information, see the Zenodo publication: van Gelder, C. W. G., Zwiers, K., Schoots, F., & Kok, R. (2024). Strengthening the Dutch data-driven health & life sciences field: TDCC-LSH facts and figures September 2022 – August 2024. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14292810