Symposium on Cloud-Native Data in Natural and Engineering Sciences

This symposium brings together stakeholders from research, data infrastructures, and policy to:

  • Identify gaps, barriers, and priorities for cloud-native data access and processing in NES.
  • Align national needs with international best practices and infrastructures.
  • Build a national stakeholder network connecting data providers, researchers, infrastructures, and policy actors.
Date

1 April 2026, 9:00 - 16:30

Venue

Course and Conference Center Domstad
9 Koningsbergerstraat
3531 AJ Utrecht

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What to expect?

  • Inspiring keynote presentations on the importance and impact of cloud-native data.
  • Stakeholder perspectives highlighting real-world challenges and opportunities.
  • Interactive breakout sessions to define key gaps, needs, and potential solutions.
  • A forward-looking panel discussion to help shape the path ahead.

Registration

To attend this event, prior registration is required. Please make sure to secure your spot by completing the registration form at the link below:

https://cloudnes-symposium-2026.eventbrite.nl/

Agenda

09:00 - 09:30: Registration

09:30 - 09:45: Welcome and opening

Serkan Girgin (University of Twente, Faculty ITC)
Joanne Yeomans (TDCC-NES)

09:45 - 11:00: Keynote talks: why cloud-native data?

Inspiring keynotes on cloud-native data at scale and community perspectives, with a focus on what does cloud-native mean in practice.

Accelerating Cloud-Native Adoption through Community Building, User Engagement and Upskilling
Sabrina Szeto (thriveGEO)

Producing Global Cloud-Less Landsat Monthly Time Series 2000-2025 Using Iterative Aggregation and Gap-filling
Tomislav Hengl (OpenGeoHub)

The Challenges of Standardization and Where We Are Heading
Matthias Mohr (moreGeo)

Moderator: Francesco Nattino (Netherlands eScience Center)

11:00 - 11:15: Coffee break

11:15 - 12:30: Stakeholder perspectives: challenges in practice

Short presentations to provide insights on where are we already cloud-native and where are we still locked to downlod-and-analyse paradigms.

Facilitating cloud-native data access and processing for Natural and Engineering Sciences
Serkan Girgin (University of Twente, Faculty ITC)

Using ECMWF’s Polytope to Accelerate and Simplify Scientific Workflows
Haili Hu (SURF)

Cloud-native Technologies in Research: Challenges and Opportunities
Francesco Nattino (Netherlands eScience Center)

Experiences with Terabyte Scale Storage at KNMI
Vasko Lozanov (KNMI)

Towards a Cloud-Native Geospatial Data Infrastructure?
Michel Grothe (Geonovum)

Moderator: Maarten Plieger (KNMI)

12:30 - 13:30: Lunch

13:30 - 13:45: Interactive session

An interactive session to map the current landscape, where participants share experiences and insights to capture the status quo of cloud-native data access.

Moderator: Serkan Girgin (University of Twente, Faculty ITC)

13:45 - 15:15: Breakout sessions

Parallel breakout sessions to identify needs, gaps, and potential solutions on cloud-native data access, interoperability, publishing, compute, and skill training.

15:15 - 15:30: Coffee break

15:30 - 16:15: Panel discussion: framing the road ahead

Moderated panel with short interventions from participants on what should happen in the next two years and what could be the role of the community?

  • Sabrina Szeto (thriveGeo)
  • Tomislav Hengl (OpenGeoHub)
  • Matthias Mohr (moreGeo)
  • Haili Hu (SURF)
  • Leandro Parente (OpenGeoHub)

Moderator: Martin Brandt (SURF)

16:15 - 16:30: Next steps

Wrap-up and next steps, including a position paper.

16:30: Closing