ChemHouse: A research and development centre for chemometrics

The aim of this article is to present the different activities of ChemHouse and to give an overview of the first years of operation. Detailed information can be found on the ChemHouse website (http://chemproject.org/ch emhouse). A few years ago, some researchers from Montpellier, France, created ChemHouse, a multiinstitute research cluster (INRAE, CIRAD, Irstea, University of Montpellier). This creation was guided by the development of three tools, mainly applied to near infrared spectrometry (NIRS): CheMoocs, a MOOC dedicated to chemometrics for NIRS; ChemFlow, a free and open software tool, allowing anyone to implement the techniques learned in CheMoocs and ChemData, an open database. ChemHouse aims at ensuring an open and shared scientific animation to encourage national and international collaborations in chemometrics, in particular in the form of hosting researchers, and to allow the collaborative development of own research. ChemHouse also hosts the forges of the three tools: CheMoocs, ChemFlow and ChemData. Today, ChemHouse has 48 members (Cf https://chemproject.org/chemHouse/ team). Every fortnight, ChemHouse members are invited to meet to discuss the operational and research issues of the cluster, without any restrictions. At each session, a member (or an outsider, if invited by a member) leads a scientific seminar around a presentation on a topic of their choice. More than 40 scientific presentations have been held in ChemHouse over the two years: 2019 and 2020. Some specific sessions are organised in the form of collective work on data and processing methodology, with for example participation in scientific conference shootouts. A list of these presentations and their content is available on the ChemHouse website at http://chemproject.org/chemhouse/ressources. Many ChemHouse seminars have been devoted to topical research issues: