FAQ Wageningen Data Competence Center

Education, research, value creation, infrastructure, and data management in the field of (big) data come together at the WDCC. The WDCC facilitates developments in these areas and functions as an internal and external point of contact of WUR for this.

The WDCC was established to continue to properly organise, facilitate, and monitor new applications, opportunities, and developments in the field of (big) data.

We show how relevant data and data science are in our domains. It works the other way around too: we also show how substantial the contribution of WUR can be for the development of data science, in many fields.

The Wageningen Data Competence Center organises everything that is needed to take advantage of what we can and want to do with data, now and in the future, in WUR domains. We are building upon the knowledge and data that is available at WUR.

The WDCC programme consists of five programme tracks and coordinators. Depending on your question, these are:

• Data Management: Shauna Nì Fhlaithearta
• Data Science Education: Lukasz Grus
• Infrastructure: Erik van den Bergh
• Data Science Research: Jene van der Heide
• Value Creation: Yannick van Gelder

Depending on your question and needs, our programme coordinators will help you find the correct published WUR data quickly through the use of tools. There is a data desk for all your data questions (data@wur.nl) and we can assist you in finding the right data via the search environment that has been developed within WUR. However, we also provide advice on collaboration with external parties in the field of data science, and we can tell you exactly which guidelines WUR employs. That way we can help you to organise it quickly and easily.

The WDCC data desk answers your questions about Data Science Research initiatives and Data Science Education (@WUR). We also help you with more practical matters, such as how to archive your data, what your storage situation is as well as what archiving options exist, or how you can easily share your data in a legally sound way.

By appointing an expert in the field of (big) data in each department, both in the BU and the chair group, we ensure that the data policy is better known and implemented more easily within WUR. We call this expert a Data Steward and they are the direct point of contact of the BU and chair group. This makes data support easily available for (almost) everyone.

Research Data Management is a joint responsibility of different organizations in Facility Services: FB-IT is responsible for the data infrastructure. The Library is responsible for data archiving and FAIR data services. Legal is responsible for data rights like ownership and IP. In order to make it easier for you, you can address all your questions on research data to the WDCC data desk and from there the different disciplines will assist you.

The Dutch AI Coalition asked WUR to participate in the AgriFood domain. WUR has been active in this area for a long time. Examples of its involvement include the Wageningen Data Competence Center (WDCC), the research programmes Digital Twins and Data Driven & High Tech, an extension of the Data Science in Education courses, and the recent new momentum in data science. In addition, WDCC is involved in the collaboration with OnePlanet Research Centrum, which has recently established itself on Wageningen Campus.

The WDCC ensures that BSc and MSc students can add Data Science courses to their degree programme. Depending on which degree programme you choose or take, there are different subject options for specialisation and immersion within your programme. The full overview of courses can be found online.