A Semantic Technology for Materials Design and Development

The Materials Genome Initiative seeks to accelerate the pace of discovery and deployment of advanced material systems. To accomplish this goal, global stakeholders including materials labs, universities and standards bodies have collaborated on open initiatives and teamed with large corporations to develop cutting-edge tools that exploit materials data. While these tools move the industry forward, we recognize that-similar to the Human Genome Project-the most valuable tool is the data itself. Materials scientists manage large volumes of diverse, multivariate databases that support all phases of research and development. iNovex offers a solution to link these native data sources into a semantic web, creating a vast knowledgebase for the community. Equally important, our free and open-license approach eliminates barriers to adoption by providing an open semantic platform with an easy"on-ramp"to facilitate community-driven growth. Our open API establishes a foundation for commercial tools to enrich this knowledgebase with add-on products such as streaming and batch processors, robust on-ramping and discovery tools, and big-data solutions for cloud-based analytics. Our approach provides motivation for broad stakeholder participation and open competition for commercial interests to deliver solutions that compress the materials research lifecycle and accelerate the discovery and deployment of new and advanced materials.