Materials Genome Initiative Gets Boost

Together with academic and industry partners, the Obama Administration last week announced several new commitments to its Materials Genome Initiative. The two-year-old initiative, which the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy oversees, coordinates federal materials science research across agencies and encourages academic and private-sector researchers to develop and share basic materials science work. Among the five new efforts are a $25 million investment over five years by NIST to set up a Center of Excellence on Advanced Materials; a collaboration of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Intermolecular Inc. to accurately predict materials behavior with software tools made available by LBNL; and the creation of institutes for materials innovation at Georgia Tech and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Also, Harvard University and IBM will release an open database with information on 2.3 million new materials for potential use in solar cells. And nearly 70 companies and universities are announcing materials science education activities, including an open online course by MIT focusing on innovation with and commercialization of new materials.