| NSF Org: |
DMR Division Of Materials Research |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 22, 2022 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 22, 2022 |
| Award Number: | 2241238 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Guebre Tessema
gtessema@nsf.gov (703)292-4935 DMR Division Of Materials Research MPS Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2022 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $49,153.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $49,153.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
615 W 131ST ST NEW YORK NY US 10027-7922 (212)854-6851 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
550 West 120th Street, 1401 Northwest Corner Building NEW YORK NY US 10027 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | XC-Crosscutting Activities Pro |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.049 |
ABSTRACT
This award supports a proposed workshop to bring together visionaries from Materials Science synthesis and characterization fields to explore scientific opportunities offered by the emergence of the 5th paradigm of science: AI and data enabled discovery with automation and autonomation of experiments. The context is materials discovery within the framework of the current Materials Genome Initiative strategic plan, to identify the technological, economic, and sociological challenges that will have to be overcome, and propose a path forward that will allow the US to excel and lead in this emerging area. Products of the workshop will be archives of the workshop materials, a consensus report, and a public facing journal article that summarizes the motivation and findings coming from the meeting. The focus of this meeting will be limited to materials described as having long-range order, but more specifically materials exemplified by bulk crystals, epitaxial films, 2-dimensional materials, Quantum Materials, and Van der Waals materials, but not soft materials or structural materials that will be covered in two other related workshops.
The workshop will explore concrete steps needed to enable the development of 5th generation scientific research in materials discovery in the US community. The intellectual merit of the activity is to identify early scientific opportunities and map out what investments, organizations, bureaucracies, education, and training, that need to be put into place for the US materials community to take advantage of these emerging opportunities. It will result in reports and journal articles that lay out the current understanding of the community on opportunities and needs and a vision for how this could move forward with an emphasis on short-term actionable items. Accelerating the discovery and adoption of new materials provides potentially transformative benefits to all people. A broader impact of this proposed activity is to build foundations for greatly accelerated materials discovery capabilities. 5th-Generation scientific research is an inherently multi-investigator, multi-expertise, multi-discipline convergent research activity. The workshop will also be to identify how to develop, train, and retain a diverse future workforce for operating in this teaming environment.
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.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This award supported the organization and running of a workshop entitled "Workshop: Scientific Opportunities and Instrumentation Needs for Next Generation Materials Genomics Based Materials Research in Materials with Long-Range Order".
It was one of a series of three workshops sponsored by NSF to garner feedback from the Materials Science community on their needs and ideas for advanced materials laboratories of the future (mLoF). Each workshop focused on a different class of materials. This workshop was organized around materials that exhibit long-range structural order.
The specific goals of the workshop were to address scientific needs, critical gaps in experimental capabilities, and visions for mLoFs that could help to address the gaps, specifically focusing on “Materials with Long Range Order (MLRO)”. Input was also sought to identify training and human resource requirements that will arise in mLoFs as well as opportunities for broader participation that will be enabled by mLoFs.
The workshop was held November 16 - 17, 2022 in a remote format. It consisted of short context setting and vision presentations from Dr. Linda Sapochak and Dr. Benji Maruyama who focused on autonomous experimentation as an emerging opportunity. However, it was heavily weighted into discussion breakout sessions addressing the questions "What science questions/problems in MLRO cannot be answered now due to a lack of experimental capability, or supporting theory/modeling?", "What are the technical capabilities that would be needed to solve these examples?", "What are some visions for a mLof. How would it organized, what would it cost, how would it accessed and maintained?", "What is a bold vision for what your mLoF will look like and what will the experience look like for researchers working in the lab?", and "What are training and broader access challenges and opportunities in the mLoF?". The discussion was by design allowed to be broad ranging allowing solutions to be considered that took advantage of emerging AI, machine-learning and robotic/autonomous capabilities, but also those that did not.
Discussions were captured and a summary report was written and edited by the participants which is available by contacting Prof. Simon Billinge (sb2896@columbia.edu).
Intellectual Merit:
The discussion and report identified experimental gaps in the field of the materials science of materials with long range order, specifically, on the topical areas
1. Quantum device creation, quantum state characterization
2. Engineering and characterizing functional devices
3. Predictive synthesis with control and characterization at the level of individual atoms and defects
4. Probing and understanding the dynamics of atoms and electrons in MRLO
Participants shared vision for how these gaps could be closed in a materials laboratory of the future.
A high level summary is that there is a critical need for revolutionary new experimental tools and capabilities:
- That increase by orders of magnitude the throughput in synthesis of film, bulk and low-dimensional materials
- That transform our capabilities for in situ monitoring of structure and properties during growth/synthesis
- That substantially increase (by up to orders of magnitude) the sensitivity of quantitative methods for detecting and characterizing defects, surfaces and interfaces in materials
- That improve spatially and temporally resolved measurements of materials properties and that can probe at the length/time scales of relevant defects and device structures
- That rapidly fabricate electronic and quantum devices from materials having any shape or dimension – bulk, individual grains, thin films, whiskers, etc.
- That effectively capture, with low-overhead and low-cost, accurate data and metadata from experiments for professionally maintained FAIR databases, and that will reduce the burden on individual PIs and institutions to accomplish this task.
At the same time, significant gaps in scientific data and simulation must also be bridged.
Broader Impacts:
The discussion and report addressed challenges and opportunities for research, training, and access in envisioned materials laboratories of the future including discussion of opportunities in recruitment, training and research offered by LoF, and challenges in getting there. Opportunities abound with the possibility of democratizing science by making advanced experiementation available to broad communities of people through remote access, for example. However, significant new challenges associate with privacy, accountability, and personal safety will emerge as ever more metadata is captured during lab-work. These issues, as well as issues relating to incentives, such as for open sharing data, will need to be addressed by the community.
Last Modified: 07/19/2024
Modified by: Simon J Billinge
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