Nanomaterials are characterized by unique physical and chemical properties which make them desirable for several applications. Because of their nanoscale, the properties of nanomaterials are different from larger-scale particles. In some cases they could have a negative health impact. Focusing on safety aspects related to the application of nanomaterials and nanoproducts, the consortium works on a highly interdisciplinary basis and comprises institutes from the fields of materials science, medicine, toxicology and occupational safety. Main objectives of the NFDI4NanoSafety consortium are:
- Managing sustainably quality-assured data and provide it for re-use in a highly interdisciplinary research area
- Defining comprehensive metadata standards and quality criteria for research data
- Enabling a quick and unbiased overview of existing data sets, preferably error-corrected and quality-checked raw data
- Establishing standards for data preparation to support regulatory processes and meta-analyses (prediction)
- Increasing the quality and velocity of research by accessing existing data (and thus knowledge)
- Increasing the national and international cooperativeness by data sharing
- Increasing the efficiency in designing experiments by relying on existing research data and SOP
- Avoiding duplicate experiments (especially in case of animal testing) from the point of view of researchers, reviewers and research funding agencies