Celebrating five years of the UG Digital Competence Centre

In March 2026, at the University of Groningen Digital Competence Centre (UG DCC), we celebrated our first lustrum: five years supporting researchers and research support staff in managing and stewarding research data and software at the UG. 

Colleagues, collaborators and friends from across the university joined us on March 31st for an afternoon of reflection, inspiration, and celebration. It was wonderful to see so many members of the research community come together to mark this milestone and celebrate the work we have built together since the DCC started as a national initiative in 2021. 

Looking back at the DCC journey

The programme began with a reflection on the journey of the UG DCC: from its origins as a national project to establish Digital Competence Centres across the Netherlands, to becoming a permanent service supporting the university community. 

Christina Elsenga (Archive & publish expert at the UG DCC), Welmoed Bekius (Data steward at the UG DCC) and Giulio Rosani (Data steward and IT consultant at the UG DCC) highlighted how the DCC connects expertise from the University Library (UB) and the Center for Information Technology (CIT) with faculties and institutes throughout the research lifecycle, offering advice, training, and hands-on support on topics such as data and software management, FAIR practices, privacy and data protection and IT support. 

The perspective from the research community

A highlight of the afternoon was hearing from our research community who have worked with the DCC in their own projects. These presentations offered a valuable perspective and demonstrated the diversity of challenges and opportunities across disciplines. 

Shekhar Nayak opened the session with a talk titled “Towards Multilingual Models for Multimodal Sarcasm Detection.” His presentation explored how machine learning models can better interpret sarcasm across languages by combining multiple data modalities such as text and images. The DCC helped him publishing his dataset in our UG supported archiving solution DataverseNL.

Hannes Hovorka presented “Digitalization in the Modern Chemical Laboratory.” He discussed how digital tools and data workflows are increasingly transforming laboratory environments, improving reproducibility, efficiency, and collaboration in chemical research. The embeded DCC data steward at the Stratigh InstituteInstitute helped him setting up secure and open digital labbooks solutions.

The final presentation was given by Sanne Berends, who shared a personal perspective in “How the DCC Shaped My Data Journey: From DPIA to Data in Practice.” Her talk reflected on the practical challenges researchers encounter when working with sensitive data and navigating requirements such as data protection impact assessments. The DCC helped her create a data flow visualisation, guided the transition to the Virtual Research Workspace (VRW) and supported her on risk documentation.

An IT and data themed PubQuiz to celebrate together

After the presentations, the celebration continued with a lively PubQuiz, where teams tested their knowledge while enjoying drinks and snacks. Two prizes were awarded to the winning teams. The first prize was a special search and find image (praatplaat) puzzle, sponsored by our collaboration with the UG Privacy and Security Guild. The second prize was a miniature LEGO bouquet. Both prizes were received with great enthusiasm and added to the festive atmosphere of the afternoon.

Thank you to everyone who joined!

We are very grateful to everyone who came to celebrate this milestone with us. Seeing so many of you attending the event was a wonderful reminder of the community that has grown around the DCC. 

We would also like to give a special thanks to the staff of the House of Connections for their support in organizing such a successful afternoon. 

As we celebrate the first five years of the UG DCC, we are excited to continue working with the research community and look forward to many more years of collaboration, innovation, and digital competence at the University of Groningen.

© Max Roeleveld - Pictures in the article