Jantina Tammes School and Center for Information Technology join forces

Govert Schoof, Head of the Geodienst at the University of Groningen ( UG), started as Liaison at the Jantina Tammes School of Digital Society, Technology and AI this month. In this role, he acts as a link between the School and the Center for Information Technology (CIT). 'With my appointment, we are taking the cooperation one step further.'

The Geodienst is part of CIT, a centre that supports research and education at the UG with data and IT solutions. The organisation works for all faculties and departments. 'This makes CIT eminently multidisciplinary,' Schoof knows. 'Our approach thus fits well with that of the Jantina Tammes School. The Schools are also about collaboration between researchers from different faculties and fields.'

Among other things, Schoof hopes to link the CIT's expertise, for example in data science and spatial information technology, to the network of the Jantina Tammes School. According to the head of the Geodienst, it is very important to keep abreast of the current themes within the UG. 'Only then can we develop the right services. However, the sheer size of the university makes it difficult to keep up with all the trends. Also, there is little time for it within our daily work sometimes.'

Network function

According to Schoof, the Schools are good at bringing together researchers from different disciplines. This networking function ensures that important themes are better identified, the Geodienst head knows. 'Thanks to these insights, we at CIT are able to respond more effectively to the needs of researchers. In this way, we hope to accelerate and expand existing collaborations and get new projects off the ground. The Schools and CIT were already working together, but we are now taking the collaboration one step further.'

Schoof says the collaboration with the Jantina Tammes School is logical because of the theme of 'digitisation'. However, he stresses that other Schools can also make use of the CIT's expertise. On Wednesdays, the head of Geodienst can be found in the House of Connections, the place at the Grote Markt where the four Schools for Science & Society are located.

Point of contact

The Head of the Geodienst sees many opportunities to work together. 'Our knowledge is 'hands-on', from statistics to nice visuals. For instance, we were able to develop a 'nieuwbouwmonitor' together with UG scientists, from which a PhD position and several research papers followed. Our open source 'lighthousemap', a data visualisation of all lighthouses in Europe, was even picked up by top scientist Ethan Mollick and went viral. Also, I often cite the example of a student, who spent two weeks tinkering by himself. He was working on an analysis for his master's thesis and got totally stuck. We were able to solve that problem here within an hour.'

As 'Liaison', Schoof hopes to act as a point of contact. 'I am very much looking forward to that. The first three months I will use to discover how the Schools work. It is my goal to connect the right people. This can be done in various ways, such as a walk-in hour and by being visible on location. So please do get in touch, so we can accelerate research together!'