Informatics for Materials Science and Engineering: Data-driven Discovery for Accelerated Experimentation and Application

Materials informatics: a ‘hot topic’ area in materials science, aims to combine traditionally bio-led informatics with computational methodologies, supporting more efficient research by identifying strategies for time- and cost-effective analysis.

The discovery and maturation of new materials has been outpaced by the thicket of data created by new combinatorial and high throughput analytical techniques. The elaboration of this "quantitative avalanche"―and the resulting complex, multi-factor analyses required to understand it―means that interest, investment, and research are revisiting informatics approaches as a solution.

This work, from Krishna Rajan, the leading expert of the informatics approach to materials, seeks to break down the barriers between data management, quality standards, data mining, exchange, and storage and analysis, as a means of accelerating scientific research in materials science.

This solutions-based reference synthesizes foundational physical, statistical, and mathematical content with emerging experimental and real-world applications, for interdisciplinary researchers and those new to the field.

• Identifies and analyzes interdisciplinary strategies (including combinatorial and high throughput approaches) that accelerate materials development cycle times and reduces associated costs
• Mathematical and computational analysis aids formulation of new structure-property correlations among large, heterogeneous, and distributed data sets
• Practical examples, computational tools, and software analysis benefits rapid identification of critical data and analysis of theoretical needs for future problems

Krishna Rajan is the SUNY Distinguished Professor and Erich Bloch Chair of the Department of Materials Design and Innovation (MDI) at the University at Buffalo; with a joint appointment as Chief Scientist in the Energy Processes and Materials Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). He has pioneered the field of Materials Informatics and data driven discovery in materials science and engineering and its impact on characterization, processing, and modeling of materials. He has received numerous recognitions including the Alexander von Humboldt Award from Germany, the CSIRO- Australia Distinguished Visiting Scientist Award, the CNRS Visiting Professorship from France and the Presidential Lecture Award from the National Institute of Materials Science, Japan.
Dr Rajan received his undergraduate degree in Metallurgy and Materials Science from the University of Toronto followed by a doctorate in Materials Science from MIT with a minor in Science and Technology policy. He subsequently held post-doctoral appointments at MIT and Cambridge University. He was a staff scientist at the National Research Council of Canada, followed by faculty positions at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Iowa State University before coming to the University at Buffalo as the founding chair of the MDI department. It is the first department that has its research and curriculum built around an informatics perspective of materials science and engineering.