casdar

In mid December 2025, Dr Samantha Pearman-Kanza was invited to present on Data Stewardship, Electronic Lab Notebooks and Ethical AI at the SCI Event: The Art of the Possible: Data, Digitalisation & AI in Practice. In her presentation, Samantha explores the importance of creating truly re-useable FAIR data principles through effective stewardship and practical digital solutions. Highlighting national initiatives such as CaSDaR and PSDI, the talk outlines emerging support structures for responsible, data-driven research. A case study from the University of Southampton illustrates lessons learned from implementing an Electronic Laboratory Notebook in the School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering. The final aspect of the talk discusses ethical AI in academia, emphasising transparency, reproducibility, and the responsible adoption of new technologies to build a trustworthy, AI-ready research ecosystem.

Louise Saul presented the CaSDaR initiative to the computing infrastructure community at Computing Insights UK 2025. CaSDaR was represented on the main stage and in the breakout rooms. On the final day of the conference, CaSDaR presented alongside other UKRI funded Network+ groups in the sessions ‘Overview of the NetworkPlus Programme’ and in the breakout session ‘From ExCALIBUR to DRI, linking the UK’s compute programme’. The latter session was run by the Computational Abilities Knowledge Exchange (CAKE) Network+. In this presentation, we gave a high-level overview of the aims and remit of the CaSDaR, describing our key deliverables activities for the next four years, alongside describing the current state of play for Data Stewards.

In early December 2025, Dr Samantha Pearman-Kanza was invited to present on CaSDaR and Data Stewardship at the University of Manchester Research Data Conversations (RDC). In her presentation, Samantha told her own "Data Stewardship Story", speaking about her journey from computer scientist, to web scientist, to masquerading as a chemist, into leading large-scale initiatives that place people at the heart of data processes, explaining how data - and more importantly the importance of the human effort to produce high quality data - has been central to all of her research and community endeavours.

In November 2025, Dr Samantha Pearman-Kanza and Dr Louise Saul attended the the Building a comprehensive and coordinated training landscape for dRTPs Workshop. This event was organised by STEP-UP and was aimed towards organisations involved in developing, delivering, or investing in skills training for research software, data, and computing infrastructure professionals.

We were excited to launch CaSDaR's first Funding Call, aimed at supporting Data Stewards across the UK research landscape. This was launched via an online webinar on the 5th November. In this webinar we described the development of the project grants, provided more detail about both grants, and gave an overview of the application and review process. We also allocated time for questions about these grants; these were not recorded however are available as an FAQ page on our website. 

In November 2025, Dr Samantha Pearman-Kanza and Dr Louise Saul attended the Understanding dRTP Training Landscape Workshop. This event was organised by CHARTED, DisCouRSE, and SCALE-UP to collaboratively build a comprehensive view of the current training landscape for digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTPs) and to understand the dRTP ecosystem in the UK.