January 30, 2025

The second edition of the EOSC Winter School took place from January 20 to 23, 2025, in Seville, Spain. Organized by the EOSC Association with support from the EOSC Focus project and other Horizon Europe EOSC-related initiatives, this event has become a key venue for harmonizing efforts and fostering collaboration among major stakeholders in the EOSC community.

This year, the event focused on achieving greater convergence and supporting the consolidation phase of the EOSC Federation. To that end, the program structure aligned the six (+1 newly created) Opportunity Areas (OAs) identified during the previous Winter School in Thessaloniki with EOSC’s four strategic pillars:

1. Sustaining and enhancing the EOSC Federation.
2. Contributing to the web of FAIR data and AI adoption.
3. Ensuring research security and sovereignty.
4. Connecting with other European Common Data Spaces and beyond.

Representatives from AI4EOSC—Álvaro López, Amanda Calatrava, and Marcin Plociennik—played a significant role, particularly in the OA4 sessions (User and Resource Environments: Trusted VREs and EOSC Federation Model). During the parallel sessions, the EOSC OA4 Expert Group and representatives from EOSC-A Task Forces discussed key AI-related topics, including inference, data storage and management, and Large Language Models (LLMs).

The AI4EOSC project presented several demonstrations showcasing the tools and developments it has been working on. Additionally, one of the hottest topics at the event was the EOSC EU Node, where AI4EOSC demonstrated its preliminary work on integrating AI models from its Marketplace into the Tools Hub, along with the use of EOSC EU Node resources within the AI4EOSC Federated Cluster.

Finally, during the plenary reporting sessions, Amanda and Álvaro shared key discussion outcomes, highlighting challenges and future steps. As the event drew to a close, Amanda, representing OA4, was invited to participate in the closing panel discussion.

The EOSC Winter School 2025 reaffirms its role as a vital meeting point for advancing the EOSC Federation and integrating artificial intelligence into the European Open Science ecosystem.