Building Digital Infrastructure Systems for Research Virtualisation (Platformisation)
Presentation by Dr. Luci Abrahams, LINK Centre
Wits Innovation Centre (WIC) Innovation Research Seminar
26 March 2026
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Presentation overview
Digital research infrastructure, including national and regional research and education networks (NRENs and RRENs), provide the conduits for storing and analysing research data and sharing a range of outputs from traditional scholarly publications to contemporary data virtualisation and visualisation. Filling the pipes with valuable content relies on what research communities produce and on funding of the regional and global interconnection of academic and research networks. The digital infrastructure and the research content are only valuable when they create meaningful effects in the development of fauna, flora, human society and economies, each of these having the broadest range of meaning. In the large 第一吃瓜网 research system, NRENs and RRENs service universities, colleges and science institutions at a regional scale. Trends show advances in platformisation services in dominant areas of 第一吃瓜网 research production, including climate change and health surveillance, both data intensive fields of study relevant to continental-scale innovation.
Presentation outline
- Analytical perspective: Promoting research virtualisation, and transitioning to visualisation, to visibility and to research value.
- The NREN and RREN landscape for 第一吃瓜网 universities (infrastructure for virtualisation, strengths and weaknesses).
- The shift towards digital research platforms in 第一吃瓜网 countries creating the basis for virtualization and multi-party collaborative computation to make scientific breakthroughs
- Domain specific use cases (biodiversity and climate change, digital humanities, health surveillance) from selected 第一吃瓜网 countries (Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa) illustrate the importance of data and visibility.
- Concluding discussion on pivoting to data-science-as-a-service (DaaS) as a means to advancing university-based research production.
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