Richárd Fiáth is a senior research fellow in the Integrative Neuroscience Group at the HUN-REN Research Center for Natural Sciences. The research group focuses on neuroscience research and development, encompassing basic research, applied research, and experimental development. Among other things, they work on the development and validation of new types of brain implants and sensory prostheses, the investigation of the properties of various brain rhythms (e.g., sleep oscillations), epilepsy research, and the development of brain-computer interfaces. These research areas are also supported by the development of various artificial intelligence-based methods.
As a senior research scientist, Richárd’s responsibilities include conducting experiments (monitoring and manipulating brain activity in rodents) and processing and analyzing experimental data. He is in charge of managing several research projects, and for many years he has also been responsible for the secure storage and archiving of the research group’s data.
Using modern methods in brain research that offer high spatial and temporal resolution, it is not uncommon today for a single experiment to generate hundreds of gigabytes of raw data; in larger-scale research projects, the total volume of raw and derived research data generated over the course of the project can even reach the petabyte range. Thanks to his degree in computer engineering, Richárd also possesses programming skills (e.g., in Matlab and Python), which greatly facilitate the automation of uploading data packages consisting of a large number of files.
Richárd welcomed the opportunity to deposit research data in a domestic repository; he participated in the related call for proposals titled “Implementation of Pilot Projects for Research Data Archiving”—supported by ELKH, HRDA, and MTA—and subsequently in two consecutive rounds of the HUN-REN ARP Ambassador Program. Within the framework of these projects, six large datasets were deposited in the ARP—and its predecessor, CONCORDA—data repository. Among these, the dataset containing data on the cortical activity of anesthetized rats has attracted global interest, and the contained research data has already been used
- in Switzerland (Blue Brain Project, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)
- in Italy (Department of Information Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Pisa)
- in the United States (Department of Statistics, Columbia University)
- in Australia (BioMedical Machine Learning Lab (BML), Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South Wales) and
- Iran (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, K. N. Toosi University of Technology).
The other datasets are available at:
https://hdl.handle.net/21.15109/CONCORDA/ITBQD4
https://hdl.handle.net/21.15109/CONCORDA/FCNNX0
https://hdl.handle.net/21.15109/CONCORDA/QNWBW4
https://hdl.handle.net/21.15109/ARP/GBWSNE
https://hdl.handle.net/21.15109/ARP/3FWR4W
Image source: Fiáth Richárd (HUN-REN TTK)