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About OSHNED

OSHNED is a four-year project funded under Open Science NL, led by Prof. dr. ir. Isabelle Reymen at TU Eindhoven.

In the Netherlands, the open-hardware landscape is a scattering of islands. Talented groups at different universities design excellent instruments, document them, and move on — often without knowing that a neighbouring lab solved the same problem last year. The result is duplicated effort, reinvented wheels, and a lot of brilliant work that stays invisible. OSHNED exists to connect those islands into one robust national infrastructure.

Who?

Get in touch

Our Research Hardware Engineers are your first point of contact at each hub — drop them a line if you have a design to share, a problem to solve, or just want to know what OSHNED can do for your lab.

Team

The support team

  • Portrait of Isabelle Isabelle Project lead (TU Eindhoven)
  • Portrait of Sanli Sanli Supervisory board
  • Portrait of Vit Vit Supervisory board
  • Portrait of Santosh Santosh Project support
  • Portrait of Frank Frank Supervisory board
  • Portrait of Mark Mark Project support
  • Portrait of Felix Felix Supervisory board
  • Portrait of Jason Jason RHD project lead, eScience Center

Where?

The consortium

OSHNED brings together five institutions, each contributing a distinct strength.

The project is supported by the Netherlands eScience Center, 4TU.ResearchData, and VU Amsterdam. It is national by design: no single university can build this alone, and the consortium is open for other institutes to join.

  • TU Eindhoven — lead partner; Challenge-Based Learning.
  • Utrecht University — standardisation.
  • Wageningen University & Research — open hardware for the life sciences.
  • Radboud UMC — medical hardware.
  • TU Delft — the Open Hardware Academy.

How?

The four pillars

  • 1 · A network of hardware hubs

    Each participating university hosts a Research Hardware Engineer, embedded in its local prototyping facility. These engineers are the catalysts of the project: they support researchers and students, help develop and document designs, and link their lab into the national network so expertise flows both ways. A community manager keeps the hubs connected.

  • 2 · A central repository

    Rather than build from scratch, OSHNED expands the existing Research Software Directory into a home for hardware designs, blueprints, and documentation. Entries are sorted into two tiers: designs still under development, and designs that are OSHNED certified — tested and properly documented.

  • 3 · Training and capacity building

    Drawing on the proven Open Hardware Academy model, OSHNED runs training programmes, works to embed open hardware in academic curricula, and organises community events and hackathons — making sharing a normal, recognised part of research life.

  • 4 · Curation

    OSHNED runs systematic sweeps across the participating institutions to find promising designs that never travelled beyond the project that created them, documents them to a common standard, and adds them to the national repository.

When?

Three phases over 48 months

  1. Phase 1 · Groundwork

    Year 1

    Hire the Research Hardware Engineers and community manager, customise the repository, establish the Supervisory Board, and begin outreach and first trainings.

  2. Phase 2 · Implementation and expansion

    Months 12–36

    Deploy engineers, fill the repository, roll out training, begin curation sweeps, and reach beyond the founding universities toward national coverage.

  3. Phase 3 · Sustainability and refinement

    Months 36–48

    Build a long-term funding strategy, refine training, expand the repository, and run a thorough impact assessment.

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