Making the world's data on new materials accessible

With high effort researchers worldwide investigate the characteristics of potentially interesting, but still unkown materials. The donations in 2015 by our Supporting Members were used for a unique project on materials data - NoMaD.

Thanks to the monetary support of our members, researchers of the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max Planck Society were able to establish the "NoMaD (Novel Materials Discovery) Repository" to host, organize, and share this materials data - a potential that now can be tapped.

NoMaD copes with the increasing demand and requirement of storing scientific data and now makes them available for longer periods. Hereby the independently compiled and researched data on materials scattered around the globe are now collected in an open access database, freely accessible to science and industry alike. Frontier research will immensely benefit, as the results may more easily lead to new applications, e.g. when it comes to more efficient use of energy. And since enhancing commercial goods very often relies on improved or novel materials, as well a considerable benefit for industries all over the world is at hand.

The private donations led to a leverage and made this pioneering work get off the ground succsessfully. The donations allowed to establish the framework, and the project subsequently was awarded a grant in the EU Horizon 2020 program, for further development over the years 2016-18.