Professor Elena Simperl, Professor of Computer Science, has been appointed as chief scientific advisor to a new six year European Union data project, drawing on her recent work in linked data, dataset search and human data interaction. The new project will play a crucial role in facilitating open government data publication, use, and impact at unprecedented scales. It will chiefly include the launch of a new service: [data.europa.eu](https://data.europa.eu/en), which will build on the strengths of two related open-data initiatives, integrating the [European Data Portal](https://data.europa.eu/en) and [European Union Open Data Portal](https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data/) into a single, coherent core component of the public-sector data infrastructure.