Dear colleagues in the MaterialDigital community,
With 2025 well underway, we've experienced many exciting changes within our initiative: new projects have started and we welcome new employees to the PMD team.
In this newsletter you can find out more about upcoming events, current developments in our focus areas and great news about the special issue "Digitalisation in Materials Science and Engineering".
Enjoy reading!
We are delighted to welcome the MaterialDigital3 projects DiStEL, GlasAgent, KupferDigital2 and DILEMA-K to our initiative! The projects build on the work of the MD1 projects iBain, GlasDigital, KupferDigital, SmaDi and KNOW-NOW. The strong industrial involvement and the approach to material life cycles promise exciting developments.
We wish the projects great success in this first and particularly important phase. We look forward to meeting your representatives in the Workflows, Semantic Interoperability, Architecture & IT Infrastructure working groups and at our Community Meeting. If you still need invitations to the respective working group meetings, please contact us: Write to us via the contact form on the website, where you can select the respective focus area, or to info@material-digital.de.
We look forward to more MD3 projects starting soon.
A warm welcome to Yamel Lima Baquero and Juliane Schleifer! With their support, the office is gaining valuable employees. Both of them have a wide range of perspectives and expertise that they will be able to apply to their new roles at MaterialDigital.
Yamel and Juliane introduce themselves to the community in a short interview on our website. Take a look and get to know the new team members a little better already!
It's almost time: MaterialsWeek2025 and MatFo2025 will take place in the first week of April. The MaterialDigital initiative will be attending with contributions in various topics:
We are looking forward to an active week. Visit us at our MaterialDigital booth - booth number 9, right next to the BMBF booth.
Under the slogan "Digital Solutions for Tomorrow's Materials Science", the NFDI-MatWerk consortium will hold a Research Data Forum in Siegburg from 8-10 July 2025. Digital solutions for practical applications in materials science will be presented in lectures and their relevance for research will be discussed. You are welcome to register with a contribution or just as a participant.
The FEMS EUROMAT 2025 from 14 to 18 September in Granada is already marked in our calendars! News such as the acceptance of abstracts and the preliminary conference programme will be published in April and June. We will keep you informed - especially about the contributions in the Area D Characterisation, Modelling and Atificial Intelligence.
Keep your calendar free for the General Assembly:
We are currently working on a programme and concept for the 2025 Assembly, so please be patient until we can reveal all the details. We will provide you with all the information in a special newsletter in May.
Similar to MaterialDigital, DIADEM is a French initiative for the development of innovative materials and processing methods using artificial intelligence and data-based methods. The MaterialDigital initiative has already been in dialogue with DIADEM on several occasions. On 13 May 2025, there will be another workshop with the aim of establishing joint projects to drive forward the digital transformation in materials science and materials technology. Research groups from both initiatives will identify topics that are suitable for closer collaboration on a bilateral basis or for Europe-wide projects.
We actively support MD3 projects in their initial phase and take part in their kick-off events. In this way, we ensure that they receive the best possible support right from the start and that their integration into the initiative is successful. We look forward to working with you and are happy to assist the projects.
The first kickoff meeting of the partners of the MD3 project DiStEL took place from 13 to 14 February 2025 at Robert Bosch GmbH in Renningen news article of the participating DECOIT. Employees from the PMD Core Team also participated. The project, which was launched in January 2025, comprises 11 main partners and two associated companies. The aim is to digitally describe material and component states and process steps along the entire value chain from steel production to recycling. The generated data space should enable statements about the service life of the components and their CO₂ footprint in order to achieve CO₂ reduction or neutrality. The PMD team will support the project partners in the development of corresponding ontologies or the use of the PMD Core Ontology (PMDco) and the use of interoperable workflows, among other things.
The community interaction team continues to support internal and external communication, the planning and realisation of events and networking among the projects. We organise monthly meetings for all MD projects to exchange ideas with each other. We inform attendees about interesting activities and look at how synergies can best be created. Contact us if you have not yet received an invitation to a meeting. We look forward to hearing from you: community@material-digital.de.
The workflow group met on 11 and 12 March at BAM in Berlin for the Workflow Hackathon. The aim was to exchange information on current developments within the projects, but also to discuss the current status and planned developments of important key topics. Representatives from AnAtAl, DigitalModelling, Dimograph, DiMad, DigiMatUS, DiStEl, GlasAgent and KupferDigital2 reported on their respective projects. On the first day, the focus was on connecting experimental workflows and the similarities to Material Acceleration Platforms (MAPs). The workflow group exchanged ideas with experts in the field from Fraunhofer ISC and BAM. The second day focussed on the integration of ontologies in workflows and interaction with semantically structured data.
We would particularly like to thank the participants from the projects and our guests for their valuable contributions to the hackathon.
We are delighted that with the publication "Advancing Digital Transformation in Material Science: The Role of Workflows Within the MaterialDigital Initiative" in the special issue of ‘Advanced Engineering Materials’, there is now a compact overview of MaterialDigital's workflow activities, which has already been very well received by the community. As part of the workflow hackathon, the foundations have therefore already been laid for a follow-up publication to highlight the ongoing activities within the team and from the projects in the second phase. Interested parties from the projects and the community can actively contribute to the design of this follow-up article in order to provide as complete an overview as possible of the workflow activities in the MaterialDigital environment. The coordination of the necessary work will take place in the regular meeting of the workflow group.
With the newly established discussion area, there is now a place where you can discuss the following topics, among others:
This forum is designed to facilitate dialogue between and with experts and interested parties alike.
The online meeting of the workflow group also takes place regularly. In addition to reports from the projects and presentations by external experts on relevant topics, current developments are discussed and future activities are planned. One of the first highlights this year was a guest lecture by the groups of Tejs Vegge and Ivano Castelli (DTU, Denmark) on PerQueue and FINALES. If you are interested in taking part in the regular meeting, you can contact us via our contact form.
This year, PMD was once again represented at the VMAP User Forum 2025 with a contribution on the PMD Core Ontology (PMDco). From 18 to 19 February 2025, industry leaders and interested parties met in Sankt Augustin to promote the VMAP data standard and drive forward digitalisation in manufacturing. Discussions included the optimisation of simulation processes, the development of sustainable production methods and the implementation of digital product passports. Special highlights included presentations on additive manufacturing and multiphysics modelling. A total of 30 experts took part, and the benefits of ontologies and knowledge graphs in materials science and biomedicine were also highlighted. We hope to maintain and intensify our collaboration in the future.
We are pleased to inform you that there is now a special discussion area where you can discuss the following topics, among others:
This forum serves as a starting and development point for the exchange between experts, beginners and interested parties alike. Contribute to our community and share your knowledge, ask questions and develop new ideas together!
The PMD Ontology Playground successfully navigated the transition into the new year 2025. In addition to the continued lively exchange on modelling issues, especially on PMDco (current development state), a highlight at the beginning of this year (17.01.2025) was the excellent presentation by Patrick Schneider (OntOMat project) entitled "Data readiness @ Siemens".
We invite you to subscribe to our e-mail distribution list to participate in our bi-weekly interactive exchange format "Ontology Playground" on the modelling and use of ontologies and semantic technologies.
In recent months, the IT Architecture and Infrastructure team has been working intensively on the development of a demonstrator for the PMD mesh. The PMD mesh is a virtual network (VPN) based on Wireguard technology. Using the PMD mesh, services and data can be provided securely and shielded from the open internet on a PMD server. The demonstrator is intended to show examples of how the PMD mesh can be used: Semantically annotated data is provided on different PMD-S instances using the Ontodocker service and explored and analysed from a pyiron workflow. Subsequently, a data set extended by the analysis results is to be uploaded again to a triplestore (via ontodocker) and made available. This requires a suitable infrastructure. This consists of servers hosted at the Fraunhofer IWM, Leibniz-IWT, KIT, BAM and the MPI-SusMat and integrated into the PMD mesh. For this purpose, a working group met weekly to carry out all the necessary configuration steps with the help of experts from Fraunhofer AISEC. The aim is, on the one hand, to create a functional infrastructure and, on the other hand, to obtain an overview of the necessary configurations in order to create user-friendly documentation. This activity, its documentation and the associated workflow, as well as the infrastructure itself, is an extension of the PMD Demonstrator and is an example of the close links between the central topics of the PMD: semantic interoperability, workflows and IT architecture and infrastructure.
Our initiative is constantly producing exciting new scientific articles. If you also have publications from your project, please feel free to send them to community@material-digital.de. We will share them with the community and ensure that your research is visible.
Great news! All contributions to the special issue have now been published online – the special issue is ready for printing! A huge thank you to our dedicated MaterialDigital community for this outstanding collaborative work. Our special thanks go to Pedro Portella, from the MaterialDigital platform, and Sandra Kalveram, Editor-in-Chief at Wiley, for their valuable coordination and support of the authors during publication.
We are really looking forward to the printed edition! All articles are further available digitally on our website.
Since the last newsletter, the following publications of the special issue have been released:
General Paper from the PMD Team:
Contributions from the MD1 projects:
Combining Structured Data with Domain Knowledge in Battery Materials Research: The Case of Conductive Networks from the project DigiBatMat
An Ontology-Augmented Digital Twin for Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Structures at the Example of Wind Turbine Rotor Blades from the project SensoTwin
Ontology-Based Digital Infrastructure for Data-Driven Glass Development from the project GlasDigital
Ontologies for FAIR Data in Additive Manufacturing: A Use Case-Based Evaluation from the project ODE_AM
StahlDigital: Ontology‐Based Workflows for the Steel Industry from the project StahlDigital
The MPA Conference 2025 on materials, processes and applications will take place at the University of Stuttgart from 6 to 8 October 2025. The AnAttAl team is looking forward to meeting you at the conference!
Call for Abstracts: Submit your abstract by 28 March.
Particularly outstanding contributions will be invited for publication in the journals Materials Testing (De Gruyter) and Welding in the World (Springer).
Early bird discount: Secure a discount of €100 per day on the participation fee until 27 June. Speakers will receive an additional €200 discount.
Discover the publication “Digitalization and Sustainable Manufacturing - Twin Transition in Norway”, edited by Sverre Gulbrandsen-Dahl et al. This open access eBook presents the results of eight years of research with 15 industrial partners that have pursued the transition to a digitalized Industry 4.0 manufacturing and sustainable manufacturing paradigm. It explains how digitalization plays an important role in promoting sustainable production and supports the principles of the circular economy. It presents various digital technologies and their possible applications for improving resource efficiency, reducing waste and optimizing product lifecycles.
In the QI-Digital project “Additive Manufacturing” at BAM, quality assurance is a crucial factor in meeting the high demands placed on components. The use of the 3D scanner is an integral part of the quality assurance process chain. It makes it possible to ensure that each component meets the requirements and accelerates the entire inspection process. The 3D scanner provides precise and reliable data that flows directly into the digital quality infrastructure. This infrastructure enables continuous monitoring and real-time analysis of the manufactured components. The digital image of the surface of each component helps to detect deviations at an early stage and to evaluate them before they can become problematic in the subsequent, often costly, production steps. Watch a short video of the 3D scanner here.
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If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@material-digital.de or via our contact persons.
We wish you a wonderful springtime!
The PMD team
