Article

News | 12-05-2022

FAIRmat consortium: New concept for accessible research data published in the journal Nature

New data infrastructure for the materials science should enable the sharing of research data in the future.

The FAIRmat consortium's mode of action (Copyright: FAIRmat)

Technological progress in the fields of energy, environment, health, mobility and information technology is largely based on the development of improved or new materials. The enormous amounts of research data produced daily in this field represent a "gold mine of the 21st century" if they could be easily shared and processed through data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) methods. This requires an efficient and usable research database in which data is FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable). Making data "findable and AI ready" will change the way science is done today. 

In the current issue of the renowned journal Nature the FAIRmat consortium ("FAIR Data Infrastructure for Condensed-Matter Physics and the Chemical Physics of Solids") presents its concept for the implementation of an integrated data infrastructure for the field of materials science. This concept integrates the fields of synthesis, experimental materials science and computational materials science. In this consortium the IKZ, under the direction of Humboldt University, is responsible for the area of materials synthesis. In FAIRmat, experts from the fields of data science, IT infrastructure, software engineering and materials science work as equal partners.

FAIRmat is a consortium of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). The NFDI is a nationwide network funded by the federal and state governments with up to 90 million euros per year from 2019 to 2028 to systematically manage research data. The project is based on extensive experience with the world's largest data infrastructure in computational materials science, the Novel Materials Discovery (NOMAD) Laboratory.

 

Publication:

Matthias Scheffler, Martin Aeschlimann, Martin Albrecht, Tristan Bereau, Hans-Joachim Bungartz, Claudia Felser, Mark Greiner, Axel Groß, Christoph Koch, Kurt Kremer, Wolfgang E. Nagel, Markus Scheidgen, Christof Wöll, and Claudia Draxl
FAIR data enabling new horizons for materials research
Nature
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04501-x.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04501-x

 

Further information:

Dr. Martin Albrecht
Department of Materials Science, IKZ