Newsletters
DAFNI Newsletter, January 2026
Updated on January 30 2026
Welcome to the DAFNI January 2026 newsletter!
We would like to wish you a very Happy New Year! Looking to the year ahead, we have some exciting news and dates for your diary.
We launched our DAFNI Fellows initiative in December, followed by a successful webinar in January. The closing date for applications is the 4th of February. This is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to become DAFNI ambassadors and to benefit from a funding opportunity of £10,000 to support their work in this role. We encourage you to apply if you have not yet done so – further information can be found below.
Be sure to save 10th September 2026 for this year’s conference, being held at Rhodes House in Oxford. We are working hard on finalising the agenda, taking on board your valuable feedback from our 2025 conference.
Building on the momentum of our DSIT-funded project Data Infrastructure for National Infrastructure (DINI), the DAFNI project team is progressing with next steps, finalising our submission and collaborating with the community. We recently launched our new website, please do explore our DINI project page which evidences our deliverables, partners, use cases and outreach activity.
Through our UKRI funding from the Building a Secure and Resilient World initiative, the DAFNI technical team are focusing on the platform and resilience. The team are exploring what a hybrid DAFNI would look like, this includes investigating STFC Scientific Computing cloud resources and hardware. We are making good progress and look forward to sharing more news with you over the coming months.
Congratulations to DAFNI Research Software Engineer, Lewis Sampson, who has successfully applied to be one of the first cohort of CAKE DRI Knowledge Exchange Fellows! At DAFNI, Lewis is responsible for developing the resilience of the DAFNI infrastructure. He leads Agile coordination for the DAFNI Systems team and acts as deputy system administrator for maintenance windows and infrastructure upgrades. CAKE – the Computational Abilities Knowledge Exchange – is an initiative to facilitate knowledge exchange and sustainable collaboration across the UK Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) communities.
Finally, we are excited that members of the DAFNI team are running an in-person workshop at the International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC), Croatia in February about using the DAFNI platform to best curate data in order to optimise re-use of both data and computational models for research purposes. Their session is already at full capacity. Further information is below and our colleagues look forward to this excellent opportunity to share information and discuss DAFNI with conference attendees.
Dr Brian Matthews, DAFNI Programme Lead
News from the central team
The DAFNI Fellows programme – apply by 4 February
The DAFNI Fellows programme launched on the 19th of December, with applications closing on 4 February 2026.
DAFNI Fellows will be selected as part of the DAFNI programme’s strategic initiative to strengthen relationships with government, industry and academia, generate research outputs to our Centre of Excellence, and boost engagement with the DAFNI platform within the infrastructure engineering scientific community.
Fellows will be supported in developing and promoting their research with opportunities to present their work to the wider DAFNI network of academic, government and business partners and supporters. In addition, the DAFNI Fellows will receive support from the DAFNI team to share their research outputs with a wider audience through inclusion on the DAFNI platform.
Find out more here: https://www.dafni.ac.uk/news-and-events/dafni-fellowship/dafni-fellowship/
Access the slides from the 21st January webinar:
https://www.dafni.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/dafni-fellows-webinar/
Save the date for the 2026 DAFNI Conference
We would be delighted to welcome you.
Hot topics to be discussed will include:
- Climate adaptation
- Infrastructure resilience
- Data in AI
- Government Missions
More information will be circulated as speakers are confirmed.
2025 Conference videos
Videos of speakers and interviews from our 2025 Conference are now available on the DAFNI YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@dafnifacility118
Explore our new website!
In early December, we were pleased to launch our new website, which now clearly presents the sheer breadth of research that we have achieved since 2021. The new site demonstrates that DAFNI is a Trusted Research Environment that can uncover insights behind data, to enhance scientific research and better inform government policy.
Easier and clearer navigation across the site ensures visitors can arrive quickly at areas of interest, from our latest case studies, to signing up to attending our conference, obtaining access to the DAFNI platform, or guidance on how to use.
Feedback is always welcome – we are aiming to make the site the best it can be to serve our community.
Visit: https://www.dafni.ac.uk/
Featured case study
The ClimaTRACKS project focuses on creating more climate-resilient rail networks by forecasting the resilience of railway networks through propagating uncertainty.
It is the first project to develop a working model that demonstrates how weather-related disruptions propagate across a railway network, using a novel methodology.
Dr Giuliano Punzo, lecturer and director at the Sheffield Urban Flows Observatory, University of Sheffield, explains, “Ultimately our model will help improve operational efficiency and reliability of freight and passenger rail services. Operators will be able to minimise losses faced by disruptions, and passengers will gain more accurate travel data so that they can better prepare their journeys and gain enhanced trust in rail journeys. This will encourage more passengers to travel by train, a more sustainable method of transport than other choices, and more freight to move by train.”
The ClimaTRACKS project is led by Dr Giuliano Punzo.
Click to download or read the full case study
Together with Giuliano, the team is made up of Dr Ji-Eun Byun, Lecturer in Smart Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure at the University of Glasgow, Dr Qian Fu, Research Fellow at the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education, University of Birmingham, Dr Tohid Erfani, Associate Professor in Computational Modelling and Infrastructure Systems Engineering at University College London, Dr Iryna Yevseyeva, Associate Professor in Computer Science at De Montfort University, Professor Konstantinos (Kostas) Nikolopoulos, Professor in Business Information Systems and Analytics at Durham University Business School, Durham University, Dr Samantha Ivings, Postdoctoral Research Associate: Sustainability in Transport Systems, University of Sheffield, and Marta Zarantonello, Postgraduate Research Student at University of Glasgow.
DAFNI Webinar Series
DAFNI Fellows webinar
Our first webinar of 2026, on the DAFNI Fellows programme, took place on 21st of January 2026 at 12pm. We covered the DAFNI Fellowship announcement of opportunity in more detail, discussing what the fellowship involves, funding available, application process, high level programme goals, the duration of the fellowship and eligibility.
If you have any questions, please email info@dafni.ac.uk
Access the slides from the webinar at:
https://www.dafni.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/dafni-fellows-webinar/
Watch our past webinars
View recordings of past webinars at https://www.dafni.ac.uk/news-events/events/webinars/
DAFNI YouTube channel: catch up on conferences and interviews
Visit https://www.youtube.com/@dafnifacility118
Partnership news
New CGFI Impact Report now available
The CGFI Impact Report is now available, reflecting on UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment (CGFI) contribution to advancing climate and environmental data and analytics in the financial sector.
CGFI’s research has ranged from climate-related physical and transition risks to spatial finance, with an emphasis on engaging with practitioners on urgent and emerging challenges.
As highlighted in the report, datasets and tools developed through CGFI have been integrated into the DAFNI platform, where they will be maintained as long-term legacy assets. This ensures continued access to valuable open-source datasets, research outputs and analytical tools for a wide range of stakeholders, including non-academic users.
This includes data created for the wind/flood model and global risk viewer which have been uploaded to DAFNI, where it is easily accessible to stakeholders through a new DAFNI Basic account system structured for non-academic users. Stakeholders can create the account via the DAFNI webpage (https://lnkd.in/ef88iDpM), which gives users access to all relevant, publicly available datasets.
DAFNI will continue to support the long-term storage and accessibility of CGFI assets, helping to sustain the impact of this work beyond the programme’s lifetime and enabling ongoing collaboration between environmental science, finance and policy communities.
We’re proud to play a role in supporting this important work and making it available to researchers into the future.
View the full report at: https://www.cgfi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Report_CGFI_2025_Final-2025.pdf
User liaison news
DAFNI team at IDCC, Croatia
Members of the DAFNI team are running an in-person workshop at the International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) in Croatia next month. Teagan Zoldoske (Digital Curation Officer), Kyle Stevenson (User Liaison) and Elizabeth Mamchits (Software Engineer) will explore how to best curate data in order to optimise re-use of both data and computational models for research purposes.
The workshop will focus on discussing the metadata behind the resource and look at what elements are required and why, and how these are necessary to allow for greater re-use. The session will demonstrate this using the DAFNI platform with examples from DAFNI’s experience of curating data and models in the UK Climate Adaptation community and with partners across Europe as part of the CROSSEU project.
DAFNI Platform Features and Updates
In the coming months, our final focus for the web application will be updating the workflow builder, making use of the newer framework to deliver an improved workflow building experience. We will also be starting work on a new way to create public collections of assets, improving the findability of project outputs and results for all users of the platform.
Access our help
If you are a user of the platform and have any feedback or platform requests, please contact support@dafni.ac.uk
Community News
The NERC Environmental Data Service (EDS) are looking to speak to individuals who work within organisations (private or public) that work collaboratively / collectively within a federated system
Do you have any ideas of people they could speak to? Or are you one of these people?
To get involved, contact: data@nerc.ukri.org
4th National Conference on Societal Resilience
📌 The University of Manchester
📌 24–25 February 2026
Organised by: The National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+]
This National event offers a unique platform to bring together practitioners, policymakers, researchers and community partners to examine how different parts of society contribute to resilience in an increasingly complex risk landscape.
🌐 https://www.alliancembs.manchester.ac.uk/events/4th-national-conference-on-societal-resilience/
DISKAH Fellowship Scheme 2026–2027 – Call for Applications
This fellowship offers a unique opportunity for researchers in the Arts and Humanities to broaden their skills and engagement with Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI), strengthening the connection between disciplinary research and advanced digital methods.
Apply by 20 February
https://www.diskah.org/fellowship-2026-call-and-faq
Nominations are open for the Royal Academy of Engineering 2026 prizes and medals!
Find how to enter and view the deadlines (c. 24 February) at: https://raeng.org.uk/programmes-and-prizes/prizes/
The NERC Environmental Data Service (EDS) are looking to speak to individuals who work within organisations (private or public) that work collaboratively / collectively within a federated system
A two-week, hands-on course at IIASA on 29 June-10 July, 2026, aiming to equip participants with a solid understanding of modeling practices and limitations of models.
Apply by 26 February.
DAFNI Technical Training
A great opportunity to get up to speed quickly on DAFNI and to ask our technical experts your burning questions. Especially recommended for those developing a research proposal and are thinking of including DAFNI as the platform of choice for the research.
Our technical training events (Wednesdays, 1:30pm-4:30pm) are available to book via Eventbrite (see weblink below).
Next training date:
- 4 February 2026
To attend the event you will need experience of entering code through a command line interface, for more information and to book, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/dafni-31793198351
Access our help
Please contact us directly for any assistance on info@dafni.ac.uk