Introducing CaSDaR at the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research (CaSDaR) Townhall Launch event

This is a session from the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research (CaSDaR) Townhall Launch event on the 18th September 2025 at The Library of Birmingham and online.

This session was led by Dr. Samantha Pearman-Kanza, CaSDaR's Principal Investigator, from the University of Southampton.

Abstract:

This session described the plans for a network of Data Stewards, including identification of community needs, generating clear definitions of the roles and career for people wanting to move into the role, promoting the importance of the close relationships between researchers and Data Stewards, and building a sustainable community for Data Stewards.\\

• The key deliverables of the CaSDaR project were also described:
  Creation of a framework of roles, responsibilities, competencies, and career progression for people working in the Data Steward sphere;
• Curating a set of resources, such as job descriptions, career resources, and best practices;
• Reporting on UK Data Steward's skills gap;
• Impact analysis of the CaSDaR's work on the community and the role of Data Steward in the UK;
• Provision of funding to support Data Stewardship through providing an evidence base; and
• Create an association to champion the needs of Data Stewards.

Also described in this session were the plans to run events to serve the needs of our community, such as Data Stewardship conference series, Bi-annual community workshops, training workshops to support the community, and Hackathons and Datathons.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Samantha Pearman-Kanza is a Principal Enterprise Fellow at the University of Southampton. She is the Principal Investigator for the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research Network www.casdar.ac.uk, and the Pathfinder Lead on Process Recording for the Physical Sciences Data Infrastructure (PSDI) Initiative – www.psdi.ac.uk. Samantha sits on the Advisory Boards for the Future Labs Live Conference in Basel, London Labs Live in the UK, the Machines Learning Chemistry Project at the University of Nottingham, and the Knowledger Project at the University of North Florida, in addition to being a member of the UK electronic information Group (UKeiG) STRIX Committee. She is also a regular columnist for the Lab Horizons Magazine under the name CompSci Cat, discussing important issues around process recording and FAIR data. Samantha’s key research areas are ELNs, process recording, FAIR data, data stewardship and research data management, and semantic web technologies.

A recording of the session is available on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/ORDyOsqCUC4

This video is an output from the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research (CaSDaR) initiative, a 4-year UKRI funded dRTP initiative, grant number UKRI739.