Data driven research efforts in academia and industry have become an important topic within the last years. Generally, the topic is discussed as “Digitalization” and associated to the high-tech agendas within enterprises and academic organizations embracing the potential of change. It is not obvious how “Digitalization” can have an impact on research and development in an industrial and academic environment and what the best practices are that must be adapted. Traditionally natural sciences, and especially chemistry, have been science disciplines based on knowledge about chemicals and materials, physical chemistry as solid foundation and traditionally following the canon of experimentation aiming at experimental evidence and interpretation of the obtained results. In the era of digital transformation together with an increased availability of data and the general ambition is to harvest their inherent value through advanced analysis technique like AI poses serious demands towards standardization of data and data quality. In this talk we will review how NFDI4Cat, the German national initiative for transforming the field of catalysis into digital catalysis has embraced this challenge and what has been achieved during 5 years of collaborative consortium work.

Prof. Dr. Stephan Andreas Schunk holds the position of a Vice President and Executive Expert within BASF SE and hte GmbH and is one of the founding members of hte GmbH. He studied chemistry at Mainz and Frankfurt University and holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Frankfurt. He has over 20 years of experience in heterogeneous and homogeneous catalyst R&D. Stephan Schunk teaches at University Leipzig and holds a professorship for Digitalization in the fields of Catalysis and Materials Science at the Institute of Technical Chemistry in Leipzig. For outstanding contributions to the field of catalysis he received the Jochen Block award in 2000, the Science Prize of the Max-Planck Society in 2001 and was awarded by the WCOC in Sapporo 2005 for his work in gas phase partial oxidation catalysis and in 2023 awarded with the EFACTS Applied Catalysis Award.