Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF)

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Non-technical description: This grant funds a workshop to bring together Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) grantees and program managers from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and various other federal agencies with a stake in the MGI. As NSF's response to the MGI, the Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) program seeks to foster tight collaborations between materials researchers with expertise in synthesis, experiment, theory, computation, and data science. These collaborations are founded on highly iterative feedback loops in which experimental results directly inform theory and computation, and vice versa, with the goal of accelerating the discovery and development of new materials. This workshop provides researchers a forum to share their research results and discuss cross-cutting topics related to establishing and sustaining research collaborations. Results from the workshop will be made available to the broader materials community and the public in the form of an electronic (PDF) Conference Proceeding booklet that will include abstracts from the posters and presentations. Technical description: Researchers that participate in projects that operate under the philosophy of the Material Genome Initiative (MGI) provide leadership to the broader materials research community through the implementation of strategies to realize the Initiative's mission of reducing both the cost and time it takes to bring a new material to market. The goals of the workshop are to: 1) Promote collaboration among MGI PIs, 2) Accelerate materials research through data-driven approaches including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing, 3) Transition fundamental research along the Materials Development Continuum, and 4) Proactively address educational and diversity issues. Overarching themes identified through presentations, break-out sessions, and discussions will be presented in a report for dissemination to the broader materials research community and the public. MGI projects are developing tools that are made available to aid research of the larger community and this workshop presents an effective means to implement this task. The workshop, which will be held in College Park, Maryland on March 30-31, 2020 follows in a series of successful workshops, the latest being held in College Park, Maryland on March 26-27, 2018. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.