Town Hall Meeting focuses on data infrastructure
Over 40 representatives from the materials data community gathered for a Town Hall Meeting during MS&T14 to assess strategic data initiatives and their potential impact on infrastructure development. The interactive event, organized by representatives from NIST and the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, opened with a series of presentations (linked below) and concluded with a panel-led question-and-answer session.
Among the data initiatives discussed, two were fact-finding efforts that are now producing valuable feedback; the Materials Research Data Management Pilot Project and the Structural Materials Data Demonstration Project. Lessons learned in the course of these projects are expected to benefit some of the newer initiatives, including the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design. CHiMaD, the focus of an entire presentation, is critically important to the advancement of integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) tools and techniques.
Another initiative singled out because of the impact it’s expected to make is the Materials Accelerator Network. Launched to fulfill the goals of the Materials Genome Initiative, the Accelerator Network is a partnership that includes the Institute for Materials at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Predictive Integrated Structural Materials Science (PRISMS) Center at the University of Michigan, and the Wisconsin Materials Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Much of the dialogue that followed the presentations centered on issues and concerns, such as the need for a common user interface and the establishment of standard taxonomies and ontologies to make data easier to find. Other areas of concern include the need for better tools to analyze and evaluate data and an efficient way to define and communicate data readiness levels (DRLs) within the MGI ecosystem. DRLs are an expression of data maturity, which is based largely on processing and curation history. A potential source of guidance and information on DRLs, the Data Readiness Levels Discussion Forum, was recently launched by the nanotechnology community and mentioned at the meeting.
The Town Hall Meeting was sponsored by the MS&T partner societies in cooperation with NIST and the NNCO.
Presentations
Update on the National and International Data Infrastructure
James A. Warren, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Nanotechnology Knowledge Infrastructure and the Concept of Data Readiness Levels (DRLs)
Lisa E. Friedersdorf, National Nanotechnology Coordination Office
Lessons Learned from Pilot and Demonstration Projects for Data Networking & Curation
Scott Henry, ASM International
Laying the MGI Infrastructure: Materials Data Format Schemas
Laura Bartolo, Kent State University
Building a Materials Innovation Ecosystem
Dave McDowell, Georgia Institute of Technology
CHiMaD Data Initiatives
Carrie Campbell, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Infrastructure and Community Incentives for Lightweight Materials Data
Will Joost, Department of Energy
