Dear colleagues in the MaterialDigital community,
digitalisation in the field of materials science and materials engineering and in consequence the platform MaterialDigital are met with more and more interest. The community is growing steadily. More than 1000 people are now registered on our website, which we are continuously revising and extending. In this newsletter we would like to give you an outlook on possible connection points with the platform as well as a summary of past events.
With increasing frequency, the question arises how collaboration is possible even without BMBF funding. In order to be able to offer better points of contact, the MaterialDigital platform has set up its own forum. The forum is intended to offer all interested persons, whether with or without funding, the first opportunity for a joint exchange. Whether material discussions, collaborations, current status of PMD, collaboration or questions to the executive office: the forum offers the first point of contact for everything.
In addition to the forum, the platform now also has its own YouTube channel. There you will find recordings of our workshops, presentations and much more in the future. You can subscribe this channel in order to stay informed about new PMD videos.
As part of the development of PMD, a Single Sign On (SSO) service has been set up at sso.material-digital.de and linked to the website. All newly created user accounts will be directly linked to this service. Accounts created before 10.06.2021 can be linked to the SSO service in your user profile. After that, you can use central PMD services such as the forum with their access data.
In 2020, the call for proposals for the "National Research Data Infrastructure" (NFDI) of the German Research Foundation (DFG) generated a lot of attention in the academic field in Germany. In this context, the PMD supported the project of a consortium for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering ("NFDI-MatWerk"). The initiative, coordinated by Fraunhofer IWM, submitted its proposal last fall. The consortium of renowned research organizations and universities is pursuing the goal of establishing a common research data infrastructure in which academic scientists will be able to share and integrate data from the research field of materials science and materials engineering in a FAIR manner, i.e. "findable", "accessible", "interoperable" as well as "reusable". The great effort has now paid off: With the decision of the joint science conference (GWK) of the federal and state governments on July 2, the NFDI-MatWerk consortium has received a funding commitment. Of course we are very happy about this! Now the consortium has to build up working structures that can handle such a huge, complex joint project - the official start of the project is already in October 2021. PMD will promote close networking of the two projects from the very beginning with the help of numerous personnel links.
On our PMD GitHub repository you can currently find first releases in the area of ontology and workflows. Besides the first version of our core ontology, you can also find examples and templates for pyiron workflows and the deployment guide. Please have a look!
In the area of events a lot has happened since the last newsletter as well:
Our information workshop 2.0 for the BMBF call MaterialDigital2 on April 22, 2021 had a very good response within the community with more than 220 participants. Due to the participation of the project sponsor VDI-TZ, a lot of questions from interested people could be answered quickly. Afterwards, the platform presented its current status, as well as short introductions to the focus areas ontologies and workflows. These can also be viewed on our YouTube channel.
The platform hosted two onboarding workshops on ontologies and workflows for the funded projects in April. With over 100 participants per workshop, the interest was significantly above expectations. Recordings of the ontology onboarding and workflow onboarding can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
Subsequently, a large BMBF kick-off event for the current academically funded projects took place on June 10, 2021, which was also very well received by the attending representatives of the BMBF, VDI-TZ, and the industry support group. At the same time, the BMBF published a press release on the MaterialDigital initiative.
After a welcome from the BMBF, the project sponsor and the PMD, the academic MaterialDigital consortia presented their projects and plans in short presentations. These presentations are linked under the projects on the PMD website and in the download area. Furthermore, PMD presented its current state of development, with special emphasis on the activities in the area of networking, ontologies and workflows. These contributions can also be viewed in the download area. We are pleased about the lively interest in the platform as well as the positive feedback and hope to welcome you all soon in our forum.
The PMD team
