Executive Office of the President

1

Fact Sheet: Progress on Materials Genome 

Initiative

May 14, 2012

President Obama announced the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) on June 24, 2011 with the 

aim of doubling the speed and reducing the cost of discovering, developing, and deploying new 

advanced materials. “The invention of silicon circuits and lithium ion batteries made computers 

and iPods and iPads possible, but it took years to get those technologies from the drawing board 

to the market place,” the President said at Carnegie Mellon University. “We can do it faster.”

Indeed, today, it can take 20 years or more for a newly discovered material to be incorporated 

into commercial products. This pace is far too slow given the range of urgent challenges that 

high-tech materials can help address, including making vehicles safer and lighter; creating 

packaging that keeps food fresher and more nutritious; and producing lightweight, bullet-proof 

vests for law enforcement officers and soldiers. New materials are also a major part of the 

American manufacturing enterprise—a central feature of the Nation’s economy that generates 

innovation, opportunities, and jobs.

The MGI, announced in conjunction with the Administration’s Advanced Manufacturing 

Partnership, is a multi-agency effort to catalyze a new era of policies, resources, and 

infrastructure that support American institutions as they work to set a new pace for bringing new 

materials to market. Already, the Administration has announced investments in nine Federal 

programs at the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Institute of Standards 

and Technology and National Science Foundation that will support the MGI.

In fiscal year 2012 alone, MGI commitments include:

$12 million of research at the Department of Energy that will combine 

computational tools, experimental tools, and digital data to develop and advance 

high-tech, high-performing materials; 

$17 million in materials research at the Department of Defense, including research 

to improve the prediction and optimization of materials properties; 

the launch of National Science Foundation’s Designing Materials to Revolutionize 

and Engineer our Future with expected awards to be made in summer 2012; and,

efforts at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop 

new techniques, standards, and tools for the broader research community, .

But achieving the MGI vision demands an “all hands on deck” approach, with dedicated 

involvement of academic institutions, small businesses, large industrial enterprises, professional

societies, as well as government. Toward that end, on May 14, 2012, a number of businesses and 

universities announced new commitments to advance the MGI.
Executive Office of the President

2

NEW COMMITMENTS BY INDUSTRY AND UNIVERSITIES

Harvard to Release 7 Million New Materials Leveraging IBM’s World Community Grid 

and a Partnership with Wolfram Research

In one of the largest computational chemistry experiments in history, The Clean Energy Project, 

led by the Aspuru-Guzik group at Harvard University, is using IBM's World Community Grid to 

accelerate the testing of millions of new, simulated organic molecules that might be used for low 

cost, effective and easily produced materials to conduct and store solar energy. Harvard will 

work with Wolfram to make the seven million molecules and associated data publicly available 

by the end of 2012. This effort will provide valuable information to the materials community as 

it works to collectively to advance the MGI. 

31 Companies and Academic Institutions Make Commitments to the MGI 

31 organizations that represent a broad cross-section of the materials and manufacturing 

community have signed on to the Orlando Materials Innovation Principles, released by The 

Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS). Signatories have pledged to advance the MGI 

vision by collaborating as a community, utilizing and developing new IT tools, and driving open 

models for data and knowledge sharing. 

33 Universities Pledge to Train Materials Workforce of the Future

Led by the University Materials Council (UMC), 33 universities have pledged to pursue 

innovative new methods to train future materials scientists and engineers in ways that are 

consistent with the MGI vision. Areas of potential innovation are in new courses, use of 

computation tools in the classroom and new degree programs. 

ASM International Launching Center to Accelerate Materials Data Exchange 

A new Center for Computational Materials Science and Engineering Data will work to define 

protocols collecting, disseminating, and managing materials data. These protocols will enable the 

development of data “ecosystems” for sector-specific materials, such as aerospace, to develop, 

share, and manage large amounts of data. 

Autodesk Releasing Library of 8000+ Materials and Resources to Educate Materials 

Workforce 

Autodesk is making new simulation technology and a library of properties for more than 8000 

materials available via the cloud to their more than 100,000 design customers. This technology 

was developed in cooperation with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of 

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Autodesk is also 

committed to making this new materials information available to the US educational community 

for use in the classroom which complements their recent release of Autodesk Simulation 

Workshop, a free online source of education modules that can be used to train the next 

generation of engineers in advanced materials use.
Executive Office of the President

3

Lockheed Martin Leading New Carbon Nanostructures Consortium 

Lockheed Martin has announced plans to establish an industry-led, multi-sector Carbon 

Nanostructures Consortium. The Consortium will work to accelerate the development and 

transition of affordable, high-performance carbon nanostructure-enhanced materials that have the 

potential to be transformative for energy, aerospace, and electronics.

General Electric (GE) Enhancing Industry-University-Public Interactions

In July of this year, GE Global Research will convene a Summit on Additive Manufacturing, 

bringing together design, material and process modeling technologies with manufacturing 

process development to drive faster adoption of this critical technology. This precedes a Lecture 

and Workshop series specifically devoted to the Materials Genome launching later this 

year. These steps to convene the community are complemented by an existing program where 

GE sponsors post-doctoral experts in the field on the topics of the MGI. 

Together, the above commitments will support the MGI vision in three ways: 

By fostering a new “materials innovation infrastructure” in computation, 

experimentation, digital data and collaborative networks;

By addressing high priority material problems of national importance; and 

By building a community that emphasizes workforce training and embraces a more 

collaborative approach to developing advanced materials.

BUILDING ON PROGRESS: BROAD ACTIVITIES BY NATIONAL LABS AND 

FEDERAL AGENCIES IN SUPPORT OF MGI

Argonne National Lab Assembling MGI Ecosystem in the Chicago Metropolitan Area

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory is collaborating with 

Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and private sector – building new crossdisciplinary teams with increased access to Argonne’s cutting-edge scientific tools, including 

Mira, a new 10-petaflop supercomputer. The expansion of the joint Northwestern-Argonne 

Institute will unite the laboratory’s supercomputing capabilities with Northwestern’s world-class 

materials research faculty and leverage the university’s strong ties with the advanced materials 

industry. Argonne is working with the newly established Institute for Molecular Engineering at 

the University of Chicago to expand the region’s capabilities in nanoscale technologies and 

materials design. 

Berkeley National Lab Tripling Supercomputing Hours for Materials Project

Berkeley National Lab’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center will triple 

supercomputing hours for the already successful Materials Project to 40 million hours by 2013. 

New plans are also underway to expand its supercomputing framework for material domains in 

carbon capture, advanced metal alloys, and critical materials. 

National Nanotechnology Initiative Contributing to the MGI

The National Nanotechnology Initiative is launching a new signature initiative that advances the 

goals of the MGI. The Nanotechnology Knowledge Infrastructure (NKI) developed by ten 
Executive Office of the President

4

federal agencies will stimulate the development of models, simulation tools, and databases that 

enable the prediction of specific properties and characteristics of nanoscale materials. Also, 

approaches, protocols, and standards developed through MGI activities may be initially explored, 

tested, or evaluated specifically for nanoscale materials under NKI efforts. This crossfertilization between the NNI and MGI will yield broader knowledge dissemination and can be 

facilitated by the proposed NKI effort.

DOE Leads MGI Efforts Across Multiple Programs

In FY2012, DOE is evaluating proposals for up to $12 million of research in predictive theory 

and modeling for materials and chemical sciences. This research will combine computational 

tools, experimental tools, and digital data to advance materials and chemical processes; provide 

user friendly software that captures the essential physics and chemistry of relevant systems; and 

harness the power of modern experimental techniques. In a complementary effort, the DOE 

Office of Science is forming SciDAC (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing) 

partnerships between materials and chemical researchers, applied mathematicians, and computer 

scientists to exploit the most powerful computers available to develop new algorithms and 

computational approaches that could dramatically accelerate the discovery of new materials and 

processes critical to the MGI. DOE’s Office of Science also provides funding for the 

Computational Materials and Chemical Sciences Network of inter-disciplinary teams that 

develop and test new software of relevance to materials and chemical processes. DOE’s Office

of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy continues to integrate MGI principles throughout its 

various energy technology research activities, including a $14M light-weighting effort in the 

Vehicle Technologies Program and the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Technologies Program. The 

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology Program alone has allowed millions of unique material 

compositions to be screened computationally, and hundreds of materials to be investigated 

experimentally. 

NIST Leads Measurements & Standards Efforts to Support MGI

NIST is actively engaged with stakeholders from industry, academia and government to develop: 

(1) standards and tools for the representation and interoperability of materials data, whether from 

simulation or experiment, (2) techniques and standards for the interoperation of modeling 

systems operating at multiple length and time scales and techniques, and (3) tools for the quality 

assessment of models, simulations, and the materials data generated from them. These 

techniques, standards, and tools will provide materials property data and related software to the 

research community. The NIST Advanced Materials for Industry program will also support a 

series of workshops to identify and develop the measurements and standards necessary for the 

MGI. 

NSF Funds Transformative Approaches that Support MGI

NSF has launched its Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF)

program in support of the MGI. The program is spearheaded jointly by NSF’s Mathematical and 

Physical Sciences (MPS) and Engineering (ENG) Directorates to fund transformative approaches 

to accelerate materials discovery, development and manufacturing, and to advance fundamental 

materials understanding so that material properties can be predicted, optimized, and ultimately 

controlled through design. NSF will make the first DMREF awards this summer and intends to 

continue the program in upcoming years. Other related NSF initiatives include Cyber-
Executive Office of the President

5

infrastructure for the 21st Century, CIF21, and Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing 

Big Data Science & Engineering. 

DOD Invests in Research for Materials Innovation Infrastructure

The DOD is investing $17.3 million in 2012 to extend basic research in support of the MGI. The 

Office of Naval Research has awarded basic research projects that integrate analysis with 

materials research to improve the prediction and optimization of materials properties through 

new approaches to modeling material characteristics. The Army Research Laboratory recently 

announced the launch of two basic research collaborative enterprises to create the scientific basis 

to design materials suitable for the unique requirements of the Nation's Soldiers. A consortium 

led by Johns Hopkins University will develop new materials that have been predictably and 

reliably designed to protect Soldiers in extreme dynamic environments. The University of Utah 

will lead a team to further the capability to develop sophisticated electronic materials through 

multidisciplinary and multi-scale modeling. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) will be 

awarding a university center of excellence focused on developing the fundamental science of 

computational and experimental methods common to all structural materials. AFRL also 

announced it will award efforts to solve two foundational engineering problems in the areas of 

nickel-based superalloys for jet engines and organic matrix composites for aerospace 

structures. These efforts will demonstrate the reduced cost and development time that can be 

delivered through the MGI paradigm.

###