Dear colleagues in the MaterialDigital community,
we are very pleased to present you the eighth newsletter of the Platform MaterialDigital (PMD)! The year 2022 has started with many tasks, big goals and high motivation.
Besides the further developments of the PMD, we are constantly working on making the connection more straightforward and effective for the community. Relevant questions are: What information needs to be made available? Where and how can everyone gets involved or inform yourself at an early stage to be able to connect to PMD when the time comes?
On 03.17.2022, our first PMD general assembly was held virtually with participation from all involved projects. We thank over 200 participants for their interest and contributions. The three-hour digital event with various presentations, surveys, and breakout sessions was very interactive and diversified (Fig.1). Of course, we hope to be able to organize the next event as a hybrid event, so that we can also exchange ideas with you in personal conversations. After greetings from Dr. Stefan Pieper from the project sponsor VDI and the platform speaker Prof. Dr. Peter Gumbsch, Prof. Dr. Christoph Eberl gave a presentation about the status of the platform and its vision and goals. You can find the presentation slides here. Afterwards, the already affiliated partner projects gave short presentations on their intended contribution to the platform, their current status, and their sustainable solutions. Many thanks for the exciting insights, the slides shown can be found here. In breakout sessions, there was extensive discussion and exchange on questions in the areas of ontologies, workflows, and community.
Besides our Forum, our YouTube, and LinkedIn account, you can also find us on Twitter.
Today we would like to give you a short overview of what you can expect on which social media channel:
Our Forum is for active participation and scientific exchange. Here you will find a lot of information about PMD, but you can also actively discuss with each other and with us and thus influence the direction of PMD. Here you will also find the first user stories in the area of workflows, which have been published and shared by our partner projects. The forum is your first point of contact for all questions about PMD (access is possible with your SSO account via the PMD website.) Drop by and join the discussion!
YouTube is our continuing education platform, where we are working in the background on more tutorials on how to use the platform and its services. Do you have any requests for special tutorials? Feel free to let us know in the Community section of the forum. We will take them up and implement them within the scope of our possibilities. Soon, we will also publish the first tutorials for non-experts to provide easy access to our services for all interested parties.
Follow us on LinkedIn for updates on PMD events and surveys. Looking for a new challenge? We also post current job openings on LinkedIn.
Do you rather prefer Twitter? Here you will also find interesting information about us and our partners. As on LinkedIn, you will be kept up to date about events and news here in just a few characters.
In the plenary session, we presented different levels on how you, as an interested partner, depending on your requirements and knowledge level, can inform and participate:
Level 1 "Inform": To be informed about current developments of the platform, we offer different channels that you can follow (see Social Media). Also, check out our publications on GitHub.
Level 2 "Adapt": feel free to implement concepts prepared by the platform in your project with the help of tutorials and informational videos. Think about how your data is structured and perhaps start to rethink your data structure in advance.
Level 3 "Participate": You can actively participate, for example, by contributing to discussions about your material or your process in the forum. For this purpose, we have created a separate category "Material and process discussions" and have already set up topic areas for various materials.
Level 4 "Implement": You can get even more involved in individual groups, such as the Ontology Playground, where you can participate in discussions, but also raise your own topics. You can also work on your own user stories for workflows and make an active contribution to the workflow group, for example by making your workflows available to the community in the PMD Workflow Store.
We look forward to hearing from you and your feedback, let's talk here.
To make sure you don't miss any future events related to digitalisation, materials science, and materials engineering, we have set up an events page on our website. The page is intended as a guide - we would be happy if you let us know about events that we can include (info@material-digital.de). Thank you. Future PMD events are marked with our logo and link directly to the respective registration page.
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF has published a Key points paper on the funding of materials research. It stands for a strategic reorientation of funding to secure the international competitiveness of German materials research. (German only)
The BMBF published a brochure on the MaterialDigital initiative in February. In the brochure, you will find an overview of the initiative, a short interview with Prof. Dr. Gumbsch, project presentations of the already connected partner projects, and a compact overview of the different topics of the projects. Take a look at the brochure and learn more about the exciting world of materials digitalisation. (German only)
Many thanks to everyone who took part in our industry survey at the end of last year. This survey also showed us how diverse the requirements and ideas are. However, everyone agrees on the importance of the engagement of the MaterialDigital initiative and the MaterialDigital platform, as it will lay the foundation for the digitalisation of materials.
Please continue to participate in the future! Without you, your feedback, and your collaboration, this community project cannot succeed.
Thank you and best regards,
The PMD team
