Aalto University wishes to celebrate the meaningful work done by Aaltonians to promote open science in both research and teaching. In order to find individuals or groups that have acted in an exemplary manner in the field of open science, we asked the Aalto University community for nomination for the Open Science Award 2024.
Open science and research is an approach according to which the transparency of the research process and data, educational materials and publications supports the reliability and quality of researched results. Open access to research outputs for both researchers and the general public promotes equality and the social impact of research.
The Research Steering Group (RESG) received a total of 7 nominations for the winner of the Open Science Award. Open software and methods were mentioned most often as a reason for the nomination. Open publishing, good data management and open educational materials were mentioned equally often. Nominations for the winner came from four schools.
After a close vote, RESG chose AALTOLAB Virtual Laboratories as the award winner. The group is led by Professor Antti Karttunen, other members are Samuel Girmay, Jarno Linnera, Minna Nieminen and Kirsi Yliniemi. The virtual laboratory offers open and free virtual laboratory learning materials, instructions and research publications to other educational institutions to support laboratory teaching. Over 1000 students from different universities, high schools and comprehensive schools have used AALTOLAB materials.
Other top candidates were the impressive data visualization tools developed by Professor Rupesh Vyas in his collaboration with the FinnGen project, and the open source scientific statistical software developed by the Bayesian Workflow group led by Professor Aki Vehtari from SCI. Their software has hundreds of thousands of users.
Congratulations to the winners and great runner-ups!
The winner will receive a short video as a prize, the content of which will be planned together with the winner.
The video will be published in late spring at a separate Open Science Award ceremony, the schedule and detailed program of which will be announced later.
The principle of openness is the key principle of science and research. At Aalto University, the most visible forms of open science are open access publications, open research data and metadata, and combining openness and commercialisation.
Properly managed research data creates competitive edge and is an important part of a high-quality research process. Here you will find links to support, services and instructions for research data management.
