A 2008 National Academy report on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering noted that in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive global market, integrated innovative design and rapid product development must be supported by computationally based designs, fast engineering analysis, and efficient data management tools. This project addresses the National Materials Review Board recommendations of reducing the cycle from the design of new materials to the fabrication of new devices using new materials. To address the materials-to-devices cycle challenge, the project focuses on the potential of capturing, curating, correlating and coordinating materials-to-devices digital data in a real-time and trusted manner before fully archiving and publishing the data for wide access and sharing. The software developed in this project is useful throughout the materials science and device fabrication fields, by automatically collecting, archiving, and providing collected information on all phases of materials and device fabrication development.
The project develops the Timely and Trusted Curation and Coordination (T2-C2) Data Framework, consisting of two data blocks: 1) T2-C2 Curator, providing real-time acquisition and curation of digital data from selected materials-making / characterization and device-fabrication instruments in the collaborative research units at the university, the Material Research Lab (MRL) and the Micro-and-Nanotechnology Lab (MNTL) , and 2) T2-C2 Coordinator, where collected data are filtered, correlations among data and dependency relations are identified, and the results are connected to other data processing capabilities. The goal of the T2-C2 framework is to enable reduction of the development time and cost of materials-making /characterization to device-making processes.
Through open-source software licenses and training programs, the project impacts material science, device fabrication and other fields within the university, and other interdisciplinary research institutions and their materials design and manufacturing processes. Through courses, tutorials, workshops, and outreach, the project develops interdisciplinary scientists, teaches the next generation of students, and informs broader audiences about the potential of timely and trusted data collection, curation, spatio-temporal analytics, and correlations between material-making/characterization and device-fabrication processes.
