FAIR Data Expert @ vito

As an internationally recognized research center, VITO accelerates the transition to a sustainable world. Our world-class Environment & Health team puts data and scientific innovation at the service of a healthier society. To enable cutting-edge research on the links between the environment and our health, we develop scientific applications, data platforms, and data catalogues. We provide services to both data owners and data users across Europe, helping them to make data interoperable and to facilitate data reuse.

• We are looking for a FAIR Data Expert to lead the scientific development and application of FAIR data approaches for environmental health research.
• You will work at the intersection of data science, environmental health and research methodology, developing innovative ways to make complex data suitable for interdisciplinary research and reuse.
• You will help shape European data infrastructures with long-term scientific and societal impact.
• You will play a pivotal role in enabling high-quality, FAIR data-driven research by collaborating with researchers, data stewards, domain experts, and technical teams to make complex datasets findable, accessible, interoperable, trustworthy, and reusable across organizations, disciplines, and borders.
• You will translate scientific needs into practical solutions that make research data FAIR.
• You lead the development and implementation of semantic resources.

Your responsibilities

• You lead the implementation of the FAIR data principles in our research data infrastructure for personal exposure and health data.
• You develop, maintain, and govern the necessary FAIR enabling resources and FAIR supporting resources, e.g. data schemas, data models, controlled vocabularies, ontologies, persistent identifier strategies - in collaboration with our domain experts, data stewards, data engineers, and external partners.
• You contribute to the design and execution of research and innovation projects in environmental health.
• You explore how heterogeneous data can be combined and reused to address scientific questions, assess data quality and fitness of reuse, and develop and validate FAIR and interoperable data approaches in concrete research applications.
• You are an ambassador for FAIR data.
• You facilitate and drive the adoption of the FAIR data infrastructure among colleagues and external partners by developing user-oriented resources, guidance, training, and encouragement.
• You monitor scientific and policy developments in the European research and health data landscape, including EHDS and EOSC.
• You assess their relevance for environmental health research, you translate emerging standards and opportunities into actionable recommendations, and you help seize funding opportunities.
• You help ensure that data infrastructures comply with relevant regulations (e.g. GDPR) and internal policies, working closely with VITO’s data protection and security experts.
• You contribute to research and innovation proposals and help develop new project ideas and funding opportunities in the field of FAIR environmental health data.
• You disseminate research results through scientific publications, reports, conference contributions, training, and participation in European research communities.
• You shape how environmental health data is shared and reused across Europe, through active participation in initiatives such as PARC, the European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals ( https://www.eu-parc.eu/ ) and in EIRENE, the European Research Infrastructure for the human exposome ( https://eirene.eu/ ).