The LUMEN Data Mesh: Connecting Science Across Domains Through Community-owned Data

This record gathers the materials from the LUMEN webinar "The LUMEN Data Mesh: Connecting Science Across Domains Through Community-owned Data", held online on 30 April 2026 and presented by Julien Homo (Foxcub, LUMEN technical coordinator). The session introduced the LUMEN Data Mesh as a federated approach to interdisciplinary data discovery within EOSC, connecting four scientific communities — Mathematics, Social Sciences and Humanities, Earth System Sciences, and Molecular Dynamics — while preserving their autonomy over data, vocabularies, and governance. The webinar covered why cross-domain discovery matters now, the architecture and core concepts of the Data Mesh (Data Products, Data Contracts, the Meta-Search Service, and the wider Common Discovery Infrastructure), and what communities need to produce to join the federation, namely an API exposing metadata aligned with the DPROD ontology and a machine-readable Data Contract following the Open Data Contract Standard (ODCS). Three illustrative cross-domain use cases were presented (microplastics across SSH, Earth Systems and Molecular Dynamics; mathematical models for climate projections; and the sociology of scientific knowledge across SSH and Molecular Dynamics), followed by a live walkthrough of an early prototype of the cross-domain discovery interface. The upload contains: the slide deck in PPTX and PDF formats; the consolidated Mentimeter outputs capturing participant responses on Data Mesh principles, perceived relevance, community readiness, barriers to adoption, expected cross-domain assets, and key takeaways from the session. LUMEN is funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement no. 101187940.