Dear colleagues in the MaterialDigital community,
The turn of the year is just around the corner and we look back on a successful year of the Platform MaterialDigital (PMD): Thank you for being part of this great community! We look forward to the upcoming growth of the initiative as well as the valuable collaboration with you in 2023!
Our 2nd plenary meeting could finally take place in presence on November 03, 2022. Afterwards, many participants gave us the impression that on this day the common concerns of MaterialDigital could once again be clearly advanced. All those who could not participate on site in Berlin had the opportunity to experience the morning virtually.
The plenary meeting was divided into three time blocks and opened with welcoming remarks by the President of the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Panne, the PMD spokesperson Prof. Dr. Peter Gumbsch and Dr. Stefan Pieper (Project Management Agency VDI TZ) (Block 1). Prof. Dr. Peter Gumbsch gave the first presentation about the PMD, the overall goals and the last 3 years. Afterwards, news from the initiative as well as the four PMD working groups were shared (Block 2). The afternoon (Block 3) was dedicated to networking and local exchange. You can watch the presentations and discussions of Block 1 and 2 as a video in our download area, as well as the slides of the presentations.
At the meeting with the working groups in block 3, current as well as future work topics and overlapping connecting points were extensively discussed. The poster sessions including the demonstrator presentations were very well received. It also became apparent that many would have liked to exchange ideas and create synergies even more intensively. We will take these wishes into account when organizing our next Plenary Meeting.
We are happy to see that the platform is getting more requests to connect external projects, so we would like to briefly share the following info with you: Since the MaterialDigital platform does not have a legal form, we unfortunately cannot sign Letters of Intent or Letters of Support (LoI, LoS). If you would like to participate in the initiative as a project and are still in the application phase, please include the participation in the initiative in your outline. For orientation, please find our handouts on the website under Info (MaterialDigital1 | MaterialDigital2). Please consider reserving financial resources for active participation as well.
As announced in the last newsletter, we intend to offer only MaterialDigital SSO registration on the website in the near future. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of registrants who have not migrated their account. Without migrating to the SSO, you will lose access to your account after the switch. Furthermore, you will then only be able to use our advanced services such as the forum, workflow store, etc. with SSO. If your account is not already linked to SSO, you can easily perform the migration at https://material-digital.de/auth/sso_migrate
We are planning the next full meeting as a two-day event in late summer 2023. The event should provide you with ample time for sharing as well as hands-on workshops for the working level. We will keep you informed of our plans for this and announce the event as early as possible.
In 2023, we again expect many exciting events outside of PMD. At EUROMAT2023 from 07 - 09 September 2023 in Frankfurt am Main, we will again be involved with a symposium "D08: Digital Materials: Experiments, Simulation Workflows, Ontologies and Interoperability". Again, we expect many high quality talks and posters from the MaterialDigital initiative and from the whole community. The submission deadline is January 31, 2023 Please submit your papers.
To stay up to date on events related to digitalization, feel free to check our Events page regularly and follow us on Linkedin and Twitter. We would also be very happy if you share the events with your network so that as many interested people as possible find out about them.
The majority of the MaterialDigital1 projects have now successfully passed the halfway point of their duration. At the plenary meeting, all projects impressively presented their current work status in poster sessions and demonstrators. Two of the thirteen projects are now entering the home stretch, as their funding ends in spring 2023. The progressing work of the projects recently led to an intensified cooperation with the platform and we hope that close cooperation and consultation between the projects will also be helpful in the new year.
We are very excited to welcome a new round of projects early next year that will bring more industry focus and perspective. The approaches already developed can thus be further developed and tested for industry needs.
With the new year, we want to make greater use of our social media accounts to provide regular insight into the overall initiative. Our goal is to increasingly represent your project work in the future, so we ask for your collaboration and input! Share your news and your progress with us so that we can multiply it and the community grows stronger together. The community and the exchange will also be strengthened by your participation in our forum: The forum provides space for material and process discussions, networking with interested parties, and forming new expert groups. We cordially invite you to actively use the Forum!
We thank you for your support and interest; only with you and your participation can this project and initiative be successful in the long term.
Thank you very much, best regards, relaxing holidays and come healthy into the new year,
The PMD team
