Season's Greetings 2025

Dear members and friends of the NFDI4Biodiversity community,

This year marked an important milestone for NFDI4Biodiversity: the consortium concluded its initial five-year funding phase and is now setting course for an extension until 2028. It was and is a collective effort in the best sense – shaped by many perspectives, steady collaboration and the kind of day-to-day teamwork that often goes unseen but makes all the difference.

With this in mind, the scientific evaluation of our continuation proposal in January was a strong and welcome confirmation. The reviewers highlighted the “high relevance” of our activities, noted the “outstanding dynamics” in mobilising biodiversity data and described our organisational structure as “excellent” and “exemplary” – a joint achievement we can all be proud of. A further, important signal came from the new federal government, which made a clear commitment in its coalition agreement to secure long-term funding of the NFDI. 

And there were plenty of other bright spots throughout the year: Our Living Atlas Community Workshop brought together more than 70 participants – a clear sign of how firmly NFDI4Biodiversity is anchored in research, authorities, data centres and Citizen Science. We also piloted two new participation formats – the first Topic Tables and the Flexfunds calls –, and saw numerous use-case projects reach completion, with their results fueling our portfolio. Also, as always, much of this year's success stemmed from our daily work – services, collaboration, infrastructure, helpdesk, communications, training, and more – driven by the dedication of teams across the consortium.

Another highlight was our Joint Plenary with NFDI4Earth in September. The four days of exchange, ideas and lively discussion underlined once again how much we gain from working closely with neighbouring NFDI communities and added new energy to deepen this collaboration. The photo gallery capturing these moments is available online until the end of January. We warmly invite you to revisit the impressions (password: MARUM2025).

Looking ahead, we're pleased that our network is expanding. With the start of the second funding phase in October, 13 new partners from across Germany have joined NFDI4Biodiversity. We’re delighted to welcome them and look forward to shaping the next phase together. You have the opportunity to meet the new partners at our BiodiversiTea on February 3.

We wish you a warm and restful holiday season and a smooth start to the new year! Thank you for everything you bring to NFDI4Biodiversity – through ideas, time and steady commitment.

Warm regards,
The NFDI4Biodiversity Coordination team