On September 4-6, 2024, FAIRmat hosted its first Hackathon in Berlin focused on FAIR Data Management for Spectroscopy Simulations. José Pizarro, a member of FAIRmat's Area C: Computation, organized the sessions and delivered the content.

The Hackathon started with introductory talks covering advanced simulation methods beyond DFT, such as GW, TDDFT, BSE, DMFT, KKR, and electron-phonon coupling on the first day. The slides from these presentations are available online. Over 30 participants, mainly students from different European research institutions, engaged in hands-on coding activities related to Research Data Management (RDM) during the following two days.

The participants learned how to create and develop new parsers within the NOMAD infrastructure, as well as to use the standard NOMAD schema. Parsers are essential tools in RDM, acting as translators between files and structured (meta)data schemas. The participants were able to understand, use, and extend the standard data schema defined for simulations in NOMAD.

One of the event's highlights was one participant successfully developing a parser within a day and a half, showcasing the feasibility of setting up parsers quickly. You can find the parser for YAMBO spectroscopic simulations here. This quick progress demonstrated that transforming raw data from specific formats into the standard NOMAD schema is straightforward. During the Hackathon, it was clear that setting up parsers is less time-consuming than expected, and managing research data in a consistent and FAIR way is less cumbersome than anticipated.

An important outcome of the event was demonstrating how to establish parsers and use (meta)data schemas, with participants actively engaging in these tasks. Participants not only realized the benefits of integrating parsers into their research but also felt optimistic about the efficiency of the process and the future of their work. 

In addition to technical outcomes, the Hackathon successfully fostered a collaborative environment. Participants had the opportunity to meet each other in person and interact directly with the NOMAD developers, strengthening relationships.

Plans following the hackathon include further improving parsers in collaboration with scientists and broadening the involvement of external contributors. The development of parsers will continue as a community effort to scale up and integrate more external expertise into NOMAD.

"Hey there, it is Lisa. You may remember me from the FAIRmat Users Meeting. I am starting a new research project focused on acquiring and managing data from my experiments according to the FAIR principles. I am fascinated by these principles but need a tool to help me control my experiments and acquire FAIR data without programming from scratch."

If you can relate to Lisa´s situation, watch this week´s video campaign on LinkedIn. It introduces you to our measurement and experiment control software NOMAD CAMELS and our motivation behind its development.

NOMAD CAMELS is designed for ease of use. It allows you to translate your research ideas into measurement and process protocols within minutes. You can implement instrument communication without programming skills, increase productivity and flexibility, and produce FAIR data. And it is open-source and free.

Get NOMAD CAMELS from here.

From August 25-30, 2024, FAIRmat was present at the emc2024 in Copenhagen. The team had a booth in the "Open Science Area", managed by multiple co-workers and collaborators who are active in FAIRmat and experts in electron microscopy.

The event facilitated excellent interaction between researchers and instrument manufacturers. Both researchers and manufacturers greatly appreciated the functionality of our open-source NOMAD service. Especially in electron microscopy, the data is normally extensive, which makes data management more difficult. The scientific community wishes to process the data in the same location where it is stored, eliminating data transfer. Consequently, as a highlight, they acknowledged that NOMAD meets their specific needs since it combines data management with online data processing in one tool. We had engaging and constructive discussions around NOMAD, its implementation, and future developments.

Industry partners such as Microscopy Australia actively approached us and expressed their openness to supporting the metadata standards proposed by FAIRmat. They are aware that precise and long-lasting metadata definitions are necessary to meet the requirements of funding agencies such as DFG.

We are grateful for the fruitful interaction at our FAIRmat booth and the constructive atmosphere within the exhibition area.

In addition to the booth, our co-spokesperson Christoph Koch gave a talk titled "Introducing a FAIR research data management infrastructure for electron microscopy and other condensed matter physics and materials science data" giving an overview of our recent progress in extending NOMAD. In addition, FAIRmat was well presented with several other talks on specific scientific problems.

On August 21 and 22, 2024, we organized two workshops as part the "FAIRmat Community Meets Technology Partners Workshops" series. This time, our focus was on "Data Exchange and Storage in Ellipsometry and Raman Spectroscopy", which is of significant interest to our community.

Both workshops brought together scientific and technical experts to explore the future of data structures for optical spectroscopy methods, emphasizing ellipsometry and Raman spectroscopy. We stressed the importance of FAIR data within the scientific community and its long-term value to society. We introduced and explained the NeXus standard and discussed its current implementations for ellipsometry and Raman spectroscopy. While we gathered valuable ideas for future improvements, the feedback was positive and the current standard was widely accepted. The workshop was attended by representatives from Sentech Instruments GmbH, Park Systems, NFDI4Chem, ELI Beamlines Laser Centre and others.

Additionally, we held a detailed "how-to" session to demonstrate the essential steps for creating NeXus files using Python. Python provides easy access to NeXus as a FAIR data format, enabling lab integration for simple measurement setups. Finally, we outlined the goals and ideas for the next workshop on ellipsometry and Raman spectroscopy.

We are looking forward to the future editions of this workshop series.

Our 4th FAIRmat Users Meeting was held on June 13-14, 2024, and this time, it took place at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg instead of Berlin.

The event was full of exciting activities, including a panel discussion on the future of research data management. The panelists were Jose Marquez, Christoph Koch (HU Berlin), Heiko Weber, Erdman Spiecker (FAU), and Brit Redöhl (DFG).

Our users Ta-Shun Chou, Julia Schumann, and Antonio Delesma Diaz shared their expertise in managing data with NOMAD, covering topics like synthesis via vapor deposition, catalysis, and computation. The event also included three hands-on workshops on NOMAD, adressing both new and experienced users, and introducing our new tool, NOMAD CAMELS, for FAIR data collection.

The two highlights of our 4th Users Meeting were the interactive workshops on RDM education and the engaging "Talk to our experts" session. During the RDM workshop, we explored Michael Krieger and colleagues' teaching approach to research data management. Two students who took this course last semester provided valuable insights and critical feedback. During the "Talk to our experts" sessions, users had the opportunity to chat casually with our developers about NOMAD, ask questions, and discuss future developments.

We introduced our new comic characters, Lisa, Thomas, and Henry, who represent our users and partners. These characters will soon feature in our social media content and at conferences. Looking ahead, we are excited to further develop these characters through storytelling to enhance community building and refine the FAIRmat communication strategy. This will enable us to better engage with our audience and address the needs of the research community regarding FAIR data.

Recordings of FAIRmat Tutorial 14 are now available on the FAIRmat and NOMAD YouTube channel! The full playlist includes:

• Working with the NOMAD-Simulations schema plugin
• Developing schemas and parsers for FAIR computational data storage
• Extending NOMAD-Simulations to support custom methods and outputs
• Interfacing complex simulation and analysis workflows with NOMAD

Read more about the FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series here. You find all the learning material for Tutorial 14 on GitHub.

The FAIRmat seminar talks held by Giovanni Vignale on "Geometric Density Functional Theory" on May 14, 2024, and Janosh Riebesell on "Foundational Machine Learning Potentials - Challenges and Opportunities" on May 23, 2024, are now available on our YouTube channel.

The 5th edition of the FAIRmat newsletter is now available to download on our website! Stay up to date with all developments in our project, read an interesting interview with our user Ta-Shun Chou, and read many more articles from the FAIRmat community.

Recordings of FAIRmat Tutorial 13 are now available on the FAIRmat and NOMAD YouTube channel! The full playlist includes:

• NOMAD’s Base Sections and Built in schemas for ELN
• Schema & Plugin development
• Deploying your NOMAD plugins

Read more about the FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series here.

FAIRmat had a wonderful experience at the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaft on June 22, 2024. Our team was amazed by the overwhelming turnout and the enthusiastic response from the visitors to our booth, which focused on research data management and coding using Lego to gamify these topics. Engaging with the public, sharing our research, and seeing the curiosity and excitement of the public was incredibly rewarding.

Special thanks go out to our colleagues at CSMB for their organization and collaboration during this event.

We look forward to participating in next year’s edition!

Here are a few highlights from the event:

FAIRmat recently organized a highly successful satellite event of the LLM (Large Language Model) Hackathon for Applications in Materials and Chemistry at the Center for the Science of Materials Berlin (CSMB) from May 6 - 8. The event welcomed approximately 50 participants from esteemed institutions such as Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (FSU), Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. The hackathon began with an engaging introductory talk by Kevin Jablonka, followed by lively discussions.

The event served as a platform to showcase innovative applications of LLMs in materials science. Participants were deeply involved in various projects and had the opportunity to present their work, with some even taking part in the global competition. A collection of submitted projects can be found online. Notably, our colleague Bernadette Mohr was a member of the prize-winning team “LangSIM”, and their project pitch is now available online. Additionally, our co-workers Nathan Daelman and Hampus Näsström were part of teams that received the Anthropic prize. The level of achievement demonstrated in just three days during the focused hackathon left us deeply impressed and delighted.

Several co-workers from FAIRmat took part in the DPG Spring Meeting of the Condensed Matters Section at Technische Universität Berlin from March 17 to 22, 2024. Our colleagues from Area C, Theory and Computation, delivered multiple talks on the principles of FAIR data and how to use NOMAD in simulation and computational materials science. At the "Hacky Hour" event, focused on practical tools for daily scientific work, the newest member of the NOMAD family, NOMAD CAMELS, was introduced, offering a powerful new tool for research. Like last year, we represented our affiliated consortium, DAPHNE4NFDI, at the exhibition area with an information booth about research data management and NOMAD. The FAIRmat contributions were complemented by a tutorial on "FAIR research data - generation, handling, and analysis within the FAIRmat infrastructure."

On May 27-28, 2024, the 1st FAIRmat workshop on data exchange and storage in optical spectroscopy took place in Berlin and online. A report and the slides can be viewed here.

Our spokesperson, Claudia Draxl, gave an invited talk in the physics colloquium at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg on April 17, 2024. She gives a perspective on how we come "From research data to data-centric research". You can find the video online now.

Recordings of FAIRmat tutorial 12 are now available on the FAIRmat and NOMAD YouTube channel! The full playlist includes:

• Introduction to NOMAD and NOMAD OASIS - Insights into technical aspects
• Hands-on Demonstration - Explore schemas, parsers, and data analysis

Read more about the FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series here.

Karlsruhe, Germany, October 27 – 30, 2024.

Building on the success of previous editions, we are pleased to announce the upcoming FAIR-DI European Conference on Data Intelligence 2024. Following the remarkable achievements and insightful discussions at the 2020 and 2022 Conferences on a FAIR Data Infrastructure for Materials Genomics, we are excited to continue the discussion and further collaboration and innovation in this growing field with the theme of Data Intelligence.

From February 12 to 14, the FAIRmat team participated in the Love Data Week 2024. The International Campaign Week was running under the theme "Your kind of data" this year.

FAIRmat contributed with a well-received social media campaign, introducing co-workers from each area within FAIRmat and giving insights into their kind of data and their everyday work life.

Our FAIRmat Tutorial 12: Getting started with NOMAD and NOMAD Oasis for research data management (RDM), given by Markus Scheidgen and Lauri Himanen was the highlight of our contributions. 

To show our love for data, our colleagues Siamak Nakhaie and Carolin Rehermann participated via coffee talks. Siamak spoke about "Copyright Fundamentals and Relevant Licenses for Research Data and Code" and Carolin about "Guide to FAIR Data Handling - Unlock the FAIRmat Advantage with NOMAD Software".

Let us keep the spirit up and celebrate our love for data all year.

NOMAD CAMELS is our new open-source software that generates future-oriented research data in line with the FAIR data principles in a simple way during experiments. Get to know more here.

On January 24-25, 2024, the 2nd FAIRmat workshop on data exchange and storage in photoemission spectroscopy took place in Berlin and online. A report and all speaker´s slides can be viewed here.

On January 29, 2024, we launched the second FAIRmat podcast episode!

In this series, called Pioneers in electronic structure theory, the FAIRmat team talks with personalities who were instrumental in developing methods and codes that have come to be known as electronic structure theory. This work includes pioneering density-functional theory and methods beyond to treat many-body effects in ground-state and excitations. In the second episode, Miguel Marques talks with Ulf von Barth about his early contributions to the development of density-functional theory and many-body methods and about his work with Lars Hedin, Carl-Olof Almbladh, Robert van Leeuwen, and others. 

Ulf von Barth was a professor at Lund University in Sweden for many years. Among numerous other achievements, he developed the spin generalization of DFT, furthered our understanding of the Kohn-Sham eigenvalues, and developed variational Green’s function methods. 

Find the podcast on YouTube or enjoy the audio-only version on Spotify now!

All invited talks given during our Third FAIRmat users meeting are now online on our YouTube Channel!

Here is the entire playlist:

• NFDI and good practice in research data management - a funder´s perspective by Michael Mößle
• A postdoc´s perspective on NOMAD and NOMAD Oasis by Pavel Ondračka
• FAIR Data Principles on Perovskite Solar Cell Research using NOMAD by Daniel Baumann
• Introduction to FAIRmat by Pepe Márquez

The December 2023 edition of the FAIRmat newsletter is now available to read here on our website! As well as project updates, this newsletter features interviews and articles from the FAIRmat community.

Recordings of FAIRmat tutorial 11 on Research data management, from fundamentals to implementation are now available on the FAIRmat and NOMAD YouTube channel! The full playlist includes:

• Introduction to research data management
• Introduction to the FAIR data principles
• Data management plans - Purpose, content, examples

Read more about the FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series here.

We are delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Huayna Terraschke as a new task leader of Task A3: Synthesis from Solid Phase and Solution!

Huayna Terraschke is a junior professor at the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry at Christian-Albrecht-Universität zu Kiel.

The third FAIRmat users meeting took place on November 15-16, 2023, in Berlin. The event attracted a diverse group of participants, including current NOMAD users, collaborators, interested researchers, representatives from joint research projects supporting FAIRmat, and various NFDI consortia. This public event, which for the first time spanned over two days, served as a platform for community building, training, and networking, and it facilitated the exchange of valuable insights into research data management and the NOMAD infrastructure.

The program commenced with invited talks, including perspectives from early career researchers to policymakers. Dr. Michael Mößle, program director of the German Research Foundation (DFG), opened this session with an overview of the current status and future perspectives of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and provided a funder's perspective on good practices in research data management in physics and materials science. Afterward, Dr. José Márquez Prieto, scientific coordinator of FAIRmat, presented an overview of FAIRmat and NOMAD. Finally, NOMAD users gave inspiring presentations on how NOMAD enhances their daily research activities. Dr. Pavel Ondračka, a researcher at Masaryk University, Czech Republic, presented a postdoc’s perspective on NOMAD and NOMAD Oasis for ab initio research data management, followed by Daniel Baumann, a doctoral researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), who presented his work on facilitating FAIR data principles in perovskite solar cell research using NOMAD. All presentations were streamed online via Zoom and will soon be available on our YouTube channel.

The first day was concluded with a dynamic and highly interactive poster session featuring live demonstrations of the latest NOMAD features and NOMAD CAMELS.

The second day featured a series of well-attended interactive workshops. Participants were able to engage in hands-on activities with NOMAD and explore research data management practices. In addition, the kick-off meeting for the PSinNFDI forum “Incorporating RDM education into university courses in Germany” took place. The meeting brought together educators and communicators to facilitate and harmonize educational initiatives on research data management for students in the physical sciences.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Kevin Jablonka as a new task leader of Task E7: Artificial-intelligence Toolkit!

Kevin Jablonka is a junior research group leader at the Helmholtz Institute for Polymers in Energy Applications (HIPOLE), Center for Energy and Environmental Chemistry Jena (University Jena).

Watch the video of Brian Pauw's talk: "Glimpses of the future, a ""full stack", highly automated materials research laboratory. Delivered in the FAIRmat Seminar on September 28, 2023.

Watch the video of Kevin Jablonka's talk: "Why machine learning can find a new material, but not a needle in a haystack". Delivered in the FAIRmat Seminar on September 15, 2023.

Clara P. Marshall, Julia Schumann and Annette Trunschke published the viewpoint article “Achieving Digital Catalysis: Strategies for Data Acquisition, Storage and Use” in Angewandte Chemie.

Considering the scientific principles of catalysis, this article discusses the requirements for the future research data infrastructure. A paradigm shift in data acquisition and management is needed to address the challenges in developing high-performance, stable, scalable, and cost-effective catalysts for energy storage and sustainable, climate-neutral chemical synthesis.

The paper “MOFGalaxyNet: a social network analysis for predicting guest accessibility in metal–organic frameworks utilizing graph convolutional networks” by our Mehrdad Jalali, Dinga Wonanke and Christof Wöll was published open access in the Journal of Cheminformatics.

This study presents the newly designed tool MOFGalaxyNet, a galaxy-like social network. In combination with a Graphical Convolutional Network (GCN), MOFGalaxyNet predicts the guest accessibility of a given MOF, which is a key performance parameter for this material class. MOFGalaxyNet provides a robust approach for screening MOFs for host-guest interaction studies.

This CECAM flagship workshop, co-organized by the FAIRmat consortium and the MoSDeF group, hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, brought together a diverse group of people within the molecular dynamics (MD) community: members of FAIR-data (or similar) consortia, developers of MD simulation engines, university or institutional data stewards, HPC resource managers, and researchers in the field particularly interested in the development of FAIR-data standards.

As one of the first workshops of its kind within this community, this event was designed to be discussion-focused, to make concrete proposals for addressing the significant challenges in the “Fair-ification” of molecular simulations. In addition to the invited talks and associated Q&A sessions, 5 distinct round-table discussions were held, including a final wrap-up discussion to brainstorm how to continue discussion and collaboration within the community. The discussion topics also included data provenance strategies for MD simulations, storage of simulation (meta)data, interoperability of simulation engines, and data structures for edge cases.

FAIRmat was not only represented in terms of the internal organizers and representatives from our computational area but also by our new Area C PI, Prof. Dr. Tristan Bereau, who showcased his group’s dataset of C₇O₂ isomers, which was used to parametrize a transferable coarse-grained force field for binary mixtures. This dataset represents the most extensive set of molecular dynamics simulations currently held in the NOMAD repository and demonstrates the potential of NOMAD as a helpful tool for the MD community.

The meeting ended with an optimistic perspective for future gatherings and collaborations between existing software projects. FAIRmat looks forward to participating in the continued developments of FAIR-data management within this community!

Our NOMAD software is now published in The Journal of Open Source Software, an open-access journal for research software packages. NOMAD is a web-based application that provides data management for materials science research data. 

From September 12-14, 2023, the Association Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastuktur (NFDI) hosted the 1st conference on research data infrastructure (CoRDI) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. These three days brought together all of the NFDI consortia and research data management (RDM) experts from around the world to exchange ideas and connect our community. 

Team members representing several different FAIRmat Areas attended. FAIRmat contributed to the conference with two talks and two posters. Heiko Weber (leader of Area B: Experiment) presented a talk titled “Research Data Management for Experiments in Solid-State Physics: Concept”, and Markus Scheidgen (Infrastructure coordinator) presented a talk titled “FAIR research data with NOMAD”. Two FAIRmat poster contributions were also presented: “FAIRmat guide to writing data management plans” by Ahmed Mansour (coordinator of Area F: User support, training, and outreach) and  “Towards FAIR data in heterogeneous catalysis research” by Julia Schumann (catalysis expert in Area E: Use case demonstrators).

In addition to the oral and poster presentations, our outreach team was also present at the FAIRmat stand at the “Marketplace of the consortia”, where we chatted with the conference participants about FAIRmat and NOMAD and explored possible opportunities for collaboration.

To view our contributions, you can visit the FAIRmat community on Zenodo. To view other contributions to the conference, check out the conference proceedings or the CoRDI community on Zenodo. 

The 2nd CoRDI will take place in 2025, we look forward to meeting you there!

Our sibling consortia NFDI4Chem awards the FAIRest dataset in chemistry! The FAIR4Chem Award honors researchers in chemistry who publish their research datasets according to the FAIR principles, thus making a significant contribution to increasing transparency in research and the reuse of scientific knowledge. Apply until November 17, 2023.

Watch the video of Maia G. Vergniory's talk, originally delivered in the FAIRmat seminar on July 28, 2023.

On July 25, 2023, we launched the very first FAIRmat podcast series!

In this series, called Pioneers in electronic-structure theory, the FAIRmat team talks with personalities who were instrumental in the development of methods and codes which have come to be known as electronic-structure theory. This includes pioneering work in density-functional theory and methods beyond to treat many-body effects in ground-state and excitations. For our first episode, Miguel Marques talks with Hardy Groß about the early days of density-functional theory, the development of time-dependent DFT (TDDFT)together with Erich Runge, his days in Santa Barbara with Walter Kohn, and much more.

Find the podcast on YouTube or enjoy the audio-only version on Spotify now, and subscribe to make sure the second episode (coming soon!) appears in your feed.

Taylor D. Sparks' talk "Materials informatics: Moving beyond screening via generative machine learning models", given in the Physical Sciences in NFDI colloquium on June 15, 2023, is now available to watch on our YouTube channel! 

In April 2023, Prof. Dr. Erich Runge, PI in FAIRmat Area F, joined the executive board of the German Physical Society (DPG) as the representative for education and young scientists (Vorstandsmitglied Bildung und wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs). Read more on the DPG website. 

We are looking for an expert in outreach and science communication to join our Area F team in Berlin! In this role you will:

• Initiate, plan, and execute outreach activities;
• Organize tutorials, workshops, schools, and other events;
• Interact with developer teams and domain experts, and organize internal team building events;
• Act as the FAIRmat community manager;
• Support and manage national and international scientific collaborations;
• Prepare newsletters, informational brochures, flyers, and other outreach materials;
• Present the project at national and international conferences;
• Manage and update the webpage and social media channels of FAIRmat;
• Be the point of contact with the outreach representatives of other related projects and the NFDI.

Read the full job description and application instructions here.

Recordings of FAIRmat tutorial 10 on FAIR electronic-structure data in NOMAD: ground state, excitations, and complex workflows are now available on the FAIRmat and NOMAD YouTube channel! The full playlist includes:

• How to explore and upload to the NOMAD Archive and Repository
• Numerical precision in ab initio calculations
• Workflows and how to link DFT and beyond-DFT calculations
• Knowledge-based XC functional exploration

Read more about the FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series here.

On June 28, 2023 our infrastructure coordinator Markus Scheidgen gave the talk FAIR research data management for materials science with NOMAD at the FDM Thüringen Coffee Lecture.

If you missed the talk (or want to watch it again!) you can now find the slides on Zenodo and the video on YouTube. 

We would like to thank the hosts for this opportunity to talk about FAIR data and NOMAD!

There are now several opportunities available to join the FAIRmat team! We are looking for:

• Data expert in biophysics / life science for Area E
• Optoelectronic materials data scientist for Area E
• Materials synthesis data scientist for Area A
• MSc researcher in The Material Genealogy Initiative: Metadata Visualisation at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

View all of the full job descriptions and apply online here.

We are delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Tristan Bereau as the new leader of Task C2: Classical Simulations and Multi-scale Modeling!

Tristan Bereau is a professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Heidelberg University.

Photoelectron spectroscopy users from several research institutes and technology partners from industry came together in a workshop on 11-12 May 2023 organized by FAIRmat. This was our second community meets technology partners workshop, after the successful ellipsometry meeting in September 2022. The hybrid event provided an opportunity to discuss FAIR data management and the specific technical solutions developed within FAIRmat for standardizing data and metadata storage and exchange in photoelectron spectroscopy experiments. Read more about the workshop and the Community Meets Technology Partners workshops on the event webpage.

The second FAIRmat user’s meeting took place on June 7, 2023 in Berlin. This highly anticipated public event attracted a diverse audience including users, collaborators, interested researchers, and representatives of other NFDI consortia. The meeting provided an invaluable platform for knowledge sharing, networking, and fostering collaboration within the community. The event commenced with an engaging introduction to FAIRmat presented by FAIRmat’s co-spokesperson, Prof. Christoph T. Koch. This was followed by an inspiring invited talk delivered by Prof. Carmen Herrmann, a user of NOMAD Oasis. The FAIRmat experts then presented a series of talks on research data management and NOMAD use cases.  All the talks were made accessible to a wider audience through live zoom broadcast and can now be viewed on our YouTube channel. The event's program also featured a poster session held in the foyer of the IRIS building. This dynamic session showcased 25 informative posters on ongoing developments in FAIRmat, other NFDI consortia and recent results from RDM practitioners. Participants had the opportunity to engage in lively discussions, exchange ideas, and forge new connections while exploring the diverse range of topics presented.

The poster session gave our team a great chance to get to know the community and our users better.

Join us online for the 10th FAIRmat hands-on tutorial on June 14, 2023!

The FAIRmat consortium aims to extend the current NOMAD Lab (meta)data structure to a large variety of materials-science data. Given our strong foundation in computational data, especially DFT, we are now extending our scope. In this tutorial, we will explain the (meta)data structure for ab initio calculations, with an emphasis on precision and on going beyond the accuracy limits of DFT.

This tutorial is suitable for new and experienced researchers who want to learn about the latest features in treating DFT and beyond DFT methodologies. We will give a brief introduction to the NOMAD Lab and the FAIRmat consortium, followed by a guided tutorial where we will:

• Show you how you can upload, publish, and explore ab initio computational data.
• Show you how to define your own complex workflows, linking between DFT and beyond DFT calculations.
• Give you examples of the post-processing capabilities of the NOMAD Lab.

We are delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Erdmann Spiecker as the new leader of Task B1: Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy. 

Prof. Dr. Spiecker is the head of the Institute of Micro- and Nanostructure Research at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.

On June 15, 2023 at 11:00, in Berlin and online, Taylor D. Sparks (University of Utah) will give the talk Materials informatics: Moving beyond screening via generative machine learning models.

Read the abstract and register here.

This event is hosted by FAIRmat as a member of Physical Sciences in NFDI. Physical Sciences in NFDI is a collaboration between the NFDI consortia DAPHNE4NFDI, FAIRmat, MaRDI, NFDIMatWerk, NFDI4Cat, NFDI4Chem and PUNCH4NFDI. We unite experts on a broad spectrum of topics in physics, chemistry, mathematics and informatics. In our talk series we invite leading scientists to showcase good data practices to an international, interdisciplinary audience. 

On 8-9 May, members of the NOMAD development team and FAIRmat domain experts met with Daniele Procida and Teodora Mihoc of Canonical for an interactive workshop on the Diátaxis framework for writing documentation.

The idea of Diàtaxis is to split documentation into distinct categories based on whether it should share practical or theoretical skills, and whether it should aid study or active work. After discussing this setup and how it fits with the needs of NOMAD users, the team got down to identifying how we can make the NOMAD documentation more effective and easy to use. Watch this space for developments in the very near future!

Hands-on team activities had everyone actively engaging with documentation, whether they joined us in Berlin or online.

Watch FAIRmat tutorial 9 Plugins: Python schemas and parsers on our YouTube channel now!

Included in this playlist:

• How to create a NOMAD plugin
• Schemas with normalizing functions
• Parsing complex tabular files
• Writing parsers for text-based file formats
• NOMAD Plugins Outlook

Recordings of the FAIRmat tutorials

• Tutorial 7: Molecular Dynamics Trajectories and Workflows in NOMAD
• Tutorial 8: Using NOMAD as an Electronic lab notebook (ELN) for FAIR data

are now available on our YouTube channel! Read more about all of our tutorials here.

We are looking for an expert for biophysical data to join our team in Berlin!

In this role you will...

• Be responsible for the development of the biophysics-specific aspects within the consortium FAIRmat, and interact with external partners;
• Build and maintain a network of stakeholders in the data-intensive field of biophysical research in Germany. A particular focus will be the handling of biophysical data from techniques such as electron microscopy and molecular simulations.

The full job description and application form are available here.

The FAIRmat team participated in a variety of ways at the DPG-Frühjahrstagung 2023 (DPG Spring Meeting) of the Condensed Matter Section (SKM) in Dresden and had a great time talking to the condensed-matter community about FAIR data management!

FAIRmat organized the special plenary talk discussion “NFDI and FAIR research data: benefit or burden?” with the panel members comprising Michael Mößle (DFG), Claudia Draxl (FAIRmat, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Ralph Claessen (Universität Würzburg) and Frank Schreiber (DAPHNE4NFDI, Universität Tübingen). Michael Mößle (DFG) started the discussion by stressing the need to better use scientific data and outcomes of DFG funded projects, and the fact that developing the standards and best practices for FAIR data management should be driven by the community for each discipline, due to different requirements of each field. The topics discussed included the implications of FAIR data management on the community, the need to provide a protective space for scientists to work with their data, and standards to control electronic lab note books (ELNs) usage and training. 

The discussion was then open to the audience, which was lively, and we saw that our community are interested in FAIR data issues and are thinking about how to overcome the hurdles associated with FAIR research data management.

In the focus session Making Experimental Data F.A.I.R. – New Concepts for Research Data Management a variety of speakers including several members of our team spoke about their experiences implementing FAIR research data management practices such as exper

imental data and meta data generation workflows, meta data schemas and file formats, electronic lab notebooks, novel tools for handling and analyzing scientific research data

Finally, our team were at the FAIRmat and DAPHNE4NFDI booth to meet the community, inform people about FAIR data management, and chat with them about our work. Whether people were learning about FAIR data for the first time or coming to us as seasoned experts, the conversations were engaging and we had a great time meeting everyone!

If you missed the chance to see our talks or meet us at the booth, you can

• Check out past talks about our work on YouTube.
• Read our brochure on data management plans here on our website.
• Reach out to us any time at fairmat@physik.hu-berlin.de.

We are excited to announce our upcoming FAIRmat tutorial on extending NOMAD and NOMAD Oasis.

NOMAD is a research data management platform for materials science. NOMAD Oasis allows you to operate the popular NOMAD service for your own lab, with your rules, and on your resources. You can adopt NOMAD Oasis to implement your institutes data policies and to work with your specific data types and workflows.

This tutorial aims to introduce participants to the new plugin mechanism in NOMAD and teach them how to develop and integrate their own Python schemas and parsers to a NOMAD Oasis. Plugins enable you to alter how NOMAD processes data and therefore allow for more powerful customisations than the custom schemas presented in past tutorials. Participants will learn how to enable the conversion of new materials science data formats into NOMAD's standardised and machine-readable format. NOMAD plugins can be contributed to the community to further promote reproducibility and transparency in materials science.

The FAIRmat guide to writing a Data Management Plan (DMP) is now available on our materials page.

This quick guide outlines what a DMP is, why it is important and how to approach writing one. It includes guidelines from the DFG but the advice is relevant to any researcher writing or contributing to a DMP.

The brand new NOMAD website has been launched! The new website features a modern and sleek design that is easy to navigate and provides a comprehensive overview of NOMAD's unique features and benefits. We have also incorporated new sections that showcase the solutions we offer, the latest infrastructure updates, our tutorials and the various channels available for user support. 

Whether you are a frequent NOMAD user or just learning about it for the first time, the new webpage will provide you with all the information you need to get started and make the most of NOMAD.

Visit the new webpage at https://nomad-lab.eu/.

On March 15, our FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series continues with a tutorial on Using NOMAD as an Electronic lab notebook (ELN) for FAIR data.

Approaching the era of big data-driven materials science, one crucial step to collecting, describing, and sharing experimental data is the adoption of electronic laboratory notebooks (ELN). At present, most synthesis data are not structured comprehensively , but FAIRmat is offering a solution by developing and operating the open-source software NOMAD. 

In this tutorial, we demonstrate the usage of NOMAD as an ELN which enables the users to generate data following the FAIR principles. We will show how we adopted NOMAD to capture data from synthesis and experiment and make use of an automated data workflow. 

FAIRmat is delighted to welcome Dr. Laurenz Rettig as the leader of Task B2: Angle-resolved Photoemission

Dr. Rettig is the leader of the Dynamics of Correlated Materials group at the Fritz Haber Insitute of the Max Planck Society.

We are happy to welcome Prof. Dr. Hongbin Zhang as the newest leader of Task E4: Magnetism and Spintronics. 

Prof. Dr. Zhang leads the Theory of Magnetic Materials Group at the Department of Materials and Geosciences, TU Darmstadt.

The Physik Journal article "Früh zur Datenkompetenz", coauthored by Michael Krieger (Area D) and Heiko Weber (Areas B&D) is now publicly available online! This article discusses the authors' experiences teaching data management skills to undergraduate students, and the importance of learning about data management and good scientific practice early in one's physics career.

We are looking for a Training and Documentation Expert for Research Data Management in Materials Science to join the FAIRmat team! 

In this role you will...

• be responsible for developing training and documentation materials for both researchers and trainers.
• establish a web-based platform containing these materials (videos, online courses, exercises, documentation, etc.). This platform will train users how to implement research data management with FAIRmat’s data infrastructure NOMAD.
• work at the interface between the infrastructure developers and the outreach team.
• present the materials at research institutions, workshops, and international conferences.

There will also be the possibility to pursue a doctorate in the field of physics (didactics). 

The full job description and instructions on how to apply are available here.

On February 15, our FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series continues with a tutorial on Molecular Dynamics Trajectories and Workflows in NOMAD.

The FAIRmat team has recently extended the NOMAD infrastructure to support trajectories and workflows, including classical molecular dynamics simulations. This interactive tutorial will walk users through the new features, demonstrating how to upload data, assess the system composition and equilibration, explore the trajectory metadata, and extract archive entries to perform detailed analyses.

The December 2022 edition of the FAIRmat newsletter is now available to read here on our website! As well as project updates, this newsletter features interviews and articles from the FAIRmat community.

Recordings of the FAIRmat tutorial on Experimental data management in NOMAD are now available on YouTube !

The YouTube playlist includes the following sessions:

• Introductory talk on the science case by Heiko Weber
• Metadata standardisation by Sandor Brockhauser
• Experiment: from planning to data collection by Michael Krieger, Johannes Lehmeyer and Alexander Fuchs
• Hands on tutorial on data sharing, visualisation and analysis in NOMAD by Sherjeel Shabih
• Q&A session

All information about the tutorial can be found on the tutorial event page. 

On Monday January 9 2023 at 16:00 CET, Susanna-Assunta Sansone of the Oxford e-Research Centre will give the talk FAIR data: no longer optional, but it takes a village! live online at the NFDI Physical Sciences Joint Colloquium.

For more information ont this talk or the colloquium series, see the event page. 

Abstract

The FAIR Principles, we have co-authored, have propelled the global debate in all disciplines on the importance of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data, by humans and machines, and the need for better research data management, transparent and reproducible data worldwide. FAIR has united stakeholders world-wide behind a common concept: good data management under common standards. FAIR is a fundamental enabler for digital transformation in the public and in the private sectors. It is no longer optional. However, the FAIR Principles are aspirational, and putting FAIR into practice is work in progress; it “takes a village”!

Starting with a brief history of the Principles, Susanna will paint the landscape of key initiatives and community activities for FAIR data, including resources like FAIRsharing (https://fairsharing.org/) for standards, databases and policies, tools like ISA (https://isa-tools.org) for describing the experimental details, and educational resources such as the FAIR Cookbook (https://faircookbook.elixir-europe.org) with best practices for research data management and hands-on recipes to make and keep data FAIR.

The video of the talk Multi-method, multi-messenger approaches to models of strong correlations given by Thomas Schäfer of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research on November 24, 2022 is now available on YouTube.

Abstract: The Hubbard model is the paradigmatic model for electronic correlations. In this talk I present a general framework for the reliable calculation of its properties, which we coined 'multi-method, multi-messenger' approach. I will illustrate the power of this approach with three recent studies: (i) an extensive synopsis of arguably all available finite-temperature methods for the half-filled Hubbard model on a simple square lattice in its weak-coupling regime and (ii) a complementary subset of those applied to the Hubbard model on a triangular geometry. While the former example fully clarifies the impact of spin fluctuations and tracks it footprints on the one- and two-particle level, the latter exhibits the intriguing interplay of geometric frustration (magnetism) and strong correlations (Mottness). As a last example, (iii) I will show the application to a model system for the magnetic properties of an actual material, the infinite layer nickelate compound LaNiO2, whose magnetic susceptibility exhibits non-Curie-Weiss behavior at low temperatures . These examples may work as a blueprint for similar future studies of strongly correlated systems.

The first FAIRmat users' meeting took place on November 16 2022 as part of the FAIRmat project meeting in Berlin. The event offered an opportunity for current users, potential users, and scientists interested in research data management to learn about the activities of FAIRmat and talk directly to our experts. The event was well attended both on-site and in the virtual room on Zoom. 

The program started with an overview talk by the FAIRmat spokesperson Prof. Claudia Draxl, followed by presentations from represenatives of various FAIRmat areas to explain the tools and applications of FAIRmat.

The FAIRmat team in action

Invited speakers included two current users, Prof. Lorenz Romaner from Montanuniversität Leobenand Dr. Michael Götte from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, and prospective user Prof. Carlos-Andres Palma from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Our guest speakers

All of the talks are now available to watch on our YouTube channel. 

FAIRmat and the NOMAD HUB - NOMAD Data Center at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin are seeking several highly qualified and motivated software engineers to join the dynamic NOMAD team towards shaping the future of materials science!

We offer a stimulating, multidisciplinary working environment, a pay scale classification (TV-L), ample development opportunities, and flexible working hours. You will work at the FAIRmat headquarters, the brand-new NOMAD Data Center at HU Berlin. 

These positions are limited until 30 September 2026 with a perspective towards prolongation. 

Read the full job advert and apply online here.

The second FAIRmat project meeting took place on November 14-16 2022, at the FAIRmat headquarters
in the Integrated Research Institute for the Sciences (IRIS) of the the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

All team members including PIs, FAIRmat domain experts and external collaborators gathered together to report on their achievements, progress and challenges during the past six months, and to plan activities for the upcoming period of the project. The meeting offered an opportunity for discussions within each Area as well as inter-Area discussions on topics of common interest and involvement.

On Wednesday December 7 2022 at 10:30 CET, John R. Helliwell of the University of Manchester will give the talk Applying the FAIR Principles to Crystallography Data Publication – a use case for DAPHNE4NFDI? at the NFDI Physical Sciences Joint Colloquium in Hamburg and online.

For more information and the registration link see the event page. 

Abstract

Crystallography is a discipline which has strived for decades to ensure availability of its data with its publications. This has involved harnessing digital storage media at every stage of their development through punched cards, magnetic tapes, disks and exemplified today by ‘the cloud’. Crystallography has a highly developed databases’ infrastructure which commenced with the Cambridge Structure Database in the 1960s and to the Protein Data Bank from 1971 onwards. There are community-agreed processed diffraction data and model validation checks that are routinely made, known as the Crystallographic Information Framework. Although this system is not perfect, it provides the best chance for ensuring reliability and thereby trust in what we do. This approach is summed up by the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) movement. More generally, the funding agencies, in their response to governments and taxpayers, also seek faster discoveries and, if possible, better value for their money. Thus, raw data could be released for use beyond the original research team, usually after an embargo period of typically 3 years. There is an expansion of the synchrotron, X-ray laser and neutron facilities’ capacities to archive raw data. The colossal expansion of the raw data archives presents excellent
opportunities to all scientists, including users of the photon and neutron facilities. In Germany the National Research Data Infrastructure Germany (NFDI) is bringing proper data management tools and metadata harvesting to many science areas including the photon and neutron sciences (DAPHNE4NFDI, DAta from PHoton and Neutron Experiments). DAPHNE4NFDI offers an exemplary approach to research raw data management strategy from proposal, to data catalogue to linking to publication.

Recordings of the FAIRmat tutorial on NOMAD Oasis and FAIR data collaboration and sharing are now available on YouTube !

The YouTube playlist includes the following sessions:

• Talk by Christoph T. Koch: The potential of digital encyclopedias in materials science
• Hands-on session with Lauri Himanen: Introduction to the NOMAD Encyclopedia

All information about the tutorial including slides & the link to the YouTube playlist can be found on the tutorial 5 page. 

On September 22-23, 2022, FAIRmat Area B held the Workshop on data exchange and storage in ellipsometry in Leipzig. This was the first workshop in the Community meets technology partners series, which aims to lay a foundation of cooperation for users and vendors to work together on making experimental data FAIR. At this first meeting, members of the scientific community and the technology partners worked together towards the goal of FAIR data handling in ellipsometry. Their very fruitful discussion was focused on reviewing a specific application definition, NXellipsometry, in detail.

You can read more about this workshop and the whole event series on the event page.

In October 2022 we are celebrating our first anniversary! As we look back on everything we have accomplished in our first year, we want to thank all of the researchers, developers and other colleagues who have joined our team so far!

• To see what we have been up to so far, check out our news page.
• To see what we have coming up, see our events page.
• If you are interested in joining us you can subscribe or apply for one of our open positions.

On Friday Septmber 9, Christopher M Wolverton of Northwestern University gave the talk The Phase Diagram of All Inorganic Materials at the NFDI Physical Sciences Joint Colloquium in Berlin.
The colloquium is now available to watch on our YouTube channel.

You can also read a review of the event on the MatWerk website. 

Abstract
One of the holy grails of materials science, unlocking structure-property relationships, has largely been pursued via bottom-up investigations of how the arrangement of atoms and interatomic bonding in a material determine its macroscopic behavior. Here we consider a complementary approach, a top-down study of the organizational structure of networks of materials, based on the interaction between materials themselves. We demonstrate the utility of applying network theory to materials science in two applications: First, we unravel the complete “phase stability network of all inorganic materials” as a densely-connected complex network of 21,000 thermodynamically stable compounds (nodes) interlinked by 41 million tie-lines (edges) defining their two-phase equilibria, as computed by high-throughput density functional theory. Using the connectivity of nodes in this phase stability network, we derive a rational, data-driven metric for material reactivity, the “nobility index”, and quantitatively identify the noblest materials in nature. Second, we apply network theory to the problem of synthesizability of inorganic materials, a grand challenge for accelerating their discovery using computations. We use machine-learning of our network to predict the likelihood that hypothetical, computer generated materials will be amenable to successful experimental synthesis.

The paper Similarity of materials and data‑quality assessment by fingerprinting by Martin Kuban, Šimon Gabaj, Wahib Aggoune, Cecilia Vona, Santiago Rigamonti and Claudia Draxl appeared in the October 2022 MRS Bulletin.

Abstract
Identifying similar materials (i.e., those sharing a certain property or feature) requires interoperable data of high quality. It also requires means to measure similarity. We demonstrate how a spectral fingerprint as a descriptor, combined with a similarity metric, can be used for establishing quantitative relationships between materials data, thereby serving multiple purposes. This concerns, for instance, the identification of materials exhibiting electronic properties similar to a chosen one. The same approach can be used for assessing uncertainty in data that potentially come from different sources. Selected examples show how to quantify differences between measured optical spectra or the impact of methodology and computational parameters on calculated properties, like the density of states or excitonic spectra. Moreover, combining the same fingerprint with a clustering approach allows us to explore materials spaces in view of finding (un)expected trends or patterns. In all cases, we provide physical reasoning behind the findings of the automatized assessment of data.

The latest edition of the Adlershof Journal included an article interviewing our spokesperson Claudia Draxl about the work of FAIRmat. 

You can read the article online for free or find a paper copy in one of the Adlershof Technology Center buildings. 

On Friday Septmber 9 at 11:00 CEST, Christopher M Wolverton of Northwestern University will give the talk The Phase Diagram of All Inorganic Materials at the NFDI Physical Sciences Joint Colloquium in Berlin and online.

For full information and the registration link see the event page. 

Abstract

One of the holy grails of materials science, unlocking structure-property relationships, has largely been pursued via bottom-up investigations of how the arrangement of atoms and interatomic bonding in a material determine its macroscopic behavior. Here we consider a complementary approach, a top-down study of the organizational structure of networks of materials, based on the interaction between materials themselves. We demonstrate the utility of applying network theory to materials science in two applications: First, we unravel the complete “phase stability network of all inorganic materials” as a densely-connected complex network of 21,000 thermodynamically stable compounds (nodes) interlinked by 41 million tie-lines (edges) defining their two-phase equilibria, as computed by high-throughput density functional theory. Using the connectivity of nodes in this phase stability network, we derive a rational, data-driven metric for material reactivity, the “nobility index”, and quantitatively identify the noblest materials in nature. Second, we apply network theory to the problem of synthesizability of inorganic materials, a grand challenge for accelerating their discovery using computations. We use machine-learning of our network to predict the likelihood that hypothetical, computer generated materials will be amenable to successful experimental synthesis.

The FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series will resume on October 5-6, 2022 with Tutorial 5: NOMAD Encyclopedia. 

The tutorial will take place on Zoom. For a full description and registration see the tutorial page. 

FAIRmat is delighted to welcome Dr. Walid Hetaba as the leader of Task B3: Core-level Spectroscopy. 

Dr. Hetaba is the leader of the Electron Microscopy group in the department Heterogeneous Reactions at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (MPI CEC). 

We are delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Heiko Weber as the new leader of FAIRmat Area B: Experiment!

Prof. Dr. Weber is head of the Chair of Applied Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-University and leader of FAIRmat Task D5: Configurable Experiment Control Systems. 

Videos of talks from this year's FAIR-DI Conference on a FAIR Data Infrastructure for Materials Genomics are available on the conference's KouShare page under "videos". You can also find the links for specific talks on our conference program page. 

** The position is no longer available**

We are looking for a Data Steward for FAIRmat Task E2: Heterogeneous Catalysis. This role involves:

Developing web-based applications for data acquisition, storage and visualization of data in Heterogeneous Catalysis
Working at the interface between catalysis research and information technology
Mediating communication between the project partners in Task E2 and establish connections with other use cases, such as battery materials, metal organic frameworks, and optoelectronics, as wekk as with other NFDI initiatives.

Interested? You can view the full advert and apply now on our careers page.

We are looking for a project assistant to help the FAIRmat team with:

• Administrative support
• Administration of third-party funds
• Organization of internal and international events

This is an E8 TV-L position, initially limited until September 2026 but with an extension being sought, with the possibility to work part-time. The full job description and instructions on how to apply are also available on our jobs page (EN) or the Humboldt University site (DE).

The second International FAIR-DI Conference on a FAIR Data Infrastructure for Materials Genomics will take online place from July 12-15, 2022. The full program of 78 talks by experts in Data management, Experimental and computational databases, Exascale computing, High-throughput experiments and computations and Machine learning, is now available to view or download here. 

Registration for the conference is free and open until June 30, 2022. 

Recordings of the FAIRmat tutorial on NOMAD Oasis and FAIR data collaboration and sharing are now available on YouTube !

The YouTube playlist includes the following sessions:

• Talk by Claudia Draxl: From Research Islands and Data Silos to a Powerful Data Infrastructure
• Talk by Markus Scheidgen: Adapting NOMAD Oasis to Your Research
• Hands-on session with Markus Scheidgen: Installing NOMAD, adding parsers, customizing data schemas, creating ELNs

All information about the tutorial including slides & the link to the YouTube playlist can be found on the tutorial event page. 

The video of the talk The Next Decade of the US Materials Genome Initiative given by James A Warren at the NFDI Physical Sciences Joint Colloquium on May 5, 2022 is now available on YouTube.

Abstract: The US Materials Genome Initiative has just begun its second decade. With a goal of accelerating the discovery, design, development, and deployment of new materials into manufactured products, the MGI is focused on the creation of a materials innovation infrastructure.

My institution, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has framed its support for the MGI around the need for a data infrastructure that enables the rapid discovery of existing data and models, the tools to assess and improve the quality of those data, and finally the development of new methods and metrologies based on that data. In partnership with agencies across the government, academia, industry, and synergistic efforts around the globe, these approaches are now yielding significant advances.  

Of particular note is the potential for machine learning and artificial intelligence applications upon these troves of data, which is now being borne out, and the vast consequent opportunities for new discoveries. Additionally, and in light of the many changes in how materials R&D is done, the MGI is has just released a new strategic plan, charting a plan for the next 10 years of an evolving materials innovation infrastructure, which I will review in this lecture. 

The link can also be found in our video library or along with other information about the colloquium on the event page. 

The first talk of the NFDI Physical Sciences Joint Colloquium will be given by James A. Warren, Director of the NIST Materials Genome Program, on May 5, 2022. 
This will be a hybrid event, taking place in Berlin-Adlershof and on Zoom. 

More information and registration can be found here.

The video from Hans-Joachim Bungartz' talk An Infrastructure for the Infrastructure at the FAIR-DI - FAIRmat Colloquium on April 7, 2022 is now available on our website and on YouTube.

Videos from the tutorial on the NOMAD Artificial-Intelligence (AI) Toolkit, which took place on April 6-7, 2022, are now available on YouTube and Koushare. 

More information about the event and links to all videos can also be found on the Tutorial 3 page.

At our next FAIR-DI - FAIRmat Colloquium on April 7, Hans-Joachim Bungartz will talk about Providing Infrastructure for the Infrastructure.

On April 6 & 7, our FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series continues with a tutorial on the NOMAD Artificial-Intelligence (AI) Toolkit, the platform for running (jupyter) notebooks to analyse with AI tools the data contained in the NOMAD Archive. 

We will cover, in an interactive, hands-on fashion, the several aspects of the AI-toolkit: the query over the NOMAD Archive via the NOMAD API, the basic notebooks for learning AI methods, and the advanced notebooks, where the workflow of relevant publications, in which AI is applied to materials science, can be interactively reproduced and further explored. Furthermore, we will introduce the local AI-toolkit app that allows to run a local version of the notebooks, e.g., to combine own data with the NOMAD Archive data. 

At the end of the first day, few tutorial notebooks will be suggested to be perused by the participants before the second day starts. In the second day, break-out rooms will be organized, and in each room one of the selected tutorial notebooks will be discussed.

More and more demand is generated by large funding agencies around the world that researchers publish their data in open-access repositories in a reusable, FAIR way. This is also supported by EU and German federal research agencies as shown by the developments of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) projects. 

Such a movement requires that the data is annotated with well defined metadata, where the naming convention also follows standards. In order to achieve this, researchers have to be able to access the measured raw data together with any results derived by subsequent data processing. 

The workshop reviews the opportunities provided by the scientific community standard NeXus.

We are happy to invite you for the NFDI NeXus Workshop to discuss the use of the NeXus glossary/ontology, corresponding data format and FAIR Data management in general.

On March 9 and 10, our FAIRmat hands- on tutorial series continues with a tutorial on ELNs and FAIR data management.

This tutorial is reviewing the need of using electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) in materials science research labs, synthesis, and experimental characterisation facilities. A special emphasis is put on efficiently collecting all metadata and performing FAIR data management which not only facilitates organising the work better and making the processes in the lab more performant but also guarantees the possibility of data reuse via offering machine readability and machine interpretability.

The tutorial is also addressing the questions: Which kind of choices are available and how to set up such ELN system for a laboratory? A demonstration of such a lab setup will also be provided on the first day.

On the second day, three more presentations will guide you through the details of implementing such a setup for your own lab. For this purpose, we have chosen relevant, but simple use cases which can help you in mapping our strategies and solutions onto your institute.

Program

Mar 9, 2022:
Overview Talk
15:00 CET - John Henry Scott (NIST): Data-Centric Materials Science - The Critical Role of ELNs
16:00 CET - Mark Greiner: ELNs in FAIR data management

Hands-on Tutorial
17:00 CET - Christoph T. Koch: Demonstration of the eLabFTW and NOMAD in daily use
18:00 CET - End of the 1st day

Mar 10, 2022:
10:00 & 16:00 CET - José Márquez: Setting up eLabFTW for a simple lab
10:30 & 16:30 CET - Sherjeel Shabih: Integrating eLabFTW and NOMAD
11:15 & 17:15 CET - Markus Scheidgen: NOMAD ELN - ELN features integrated into NOMAD
12:00 & 18:00 CET- End of the 2nd day

Tutorial Chair: Sandor Brockhauser 

You can find all videos and exercises of the first FAIRmat tutorial on Publishing and Exploring Data with NOMAD on our website and on our YouTube channel!

Website with exercises: https://www.fair-di.eu/fairmat-tutorials-1

YouTube playlist with videos of the overview talk by Matthias Scheffler and the hands-on tutorials by Markus Scheidgen:

On February 9, the brand new FAIRmat hands-on tutorial series begins!

Feb 9, 15:00 CET
Matthias Scheffler: Making the Data Revolution Happen – How Sharing and FAIRification Is Changing the Science Already Today 

15:45-18:00 CET
Markus Scheidgen: Publishing and Exploring Data with NOMAD: How-to and Exercises 

Feb 10, 10:00-12:00 and 16:00-18:00 CET
Markus Scheidgen: Questions and Answers

The tutorial series continues every second Wednesday of the month and the following Thursday.

More info here: https://www.fair-di.eu/fairmat-tutorials-home

Our FAIRmat - NFDI4Cat collaboration was accepted for publication in ACSCatalysis. You can download the preprint of "Learning design rules for selective oxidation catalysts from high-throughput experimentation and artificial intelligence" here.

L. Foppa, C. Sutton, L. M. Ghiringhelli, S. De, P. Löser, S.A. Schunk, A. Schäfer, and M. Scheffler,
Learning design rules for selective oxidation catalysts from high-throughput experimentation and artificial intelligence
Preprint Download: chemrxiv

Hands-on FAIRmat Tutorials
Every second Wednesday of the month and the following Thursday
https://www.fair-di.eu/fairmat-tutorials-home

FAIRmat introduces its efforts towards a FAIR data infrastructure for condensed-matter physics and the chemical physics of solids in its new hands-on tutorial series. We will show how FAIRmat can help research work already today and how you will get prepared for the new scientific opportunities of tomorrow.

The tutorials consist of overview talks by internationally renowned scientists and hands-on tutorials by our FAIRmat developers.

We are looking forward to seeing you there!

FAIRmat is looking for a Public Relations / Communication Expert and Assistant! Find all information here: https://nomad-lab.eu/career

Congratulations to our FAIRmat Area A Leader Claudia Felser, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden. She is awarded the Max Born Prize 2022 for her seminal contributions to the fields of magnetic an chiral topology, in prediction, single crystal growth, and experimental observations.

The Max Born Prize is awarded jointly by the British Institute of Physics (IOP) and the German Physical Society (DPG) in memory of Max Born's work in Great Britain and Germany for particularly valuable and current scientific contributions to physics. It is awarded annually, alternately to a physicist living and working in Germany and Great Britain.

Read the article here: https://www.dpg-physik.de/auszeichnungen/dpg-preise-mit-anderen-organisationen/max-born-preis-und-medaille/preistraeger?set_language=en

After a great start of our colloquium series (watch the talk by Barend Mons here: https://youtu.be/N4CBAqKQmQs), our next colloquium will take place on December 2 at 10:15 CET. 

Christoph T. Koch will talk about Ingredients for Effective Computer-augmented Experimental Materials Science.

We are very much looking forward to her talk since it will set the stage for fruitful discussions in many sessions. So come ready to ask questions!

https://www.fair-di.eu/fairdi-colloqium-home

Elsa Olivetti's talk about Text and Data Mining for Materials Development will be postponed to spring 2022. Originally, the talk was to take place on November 4, 2021, as part of the second FAIR-DI - FAIRmat colloquium. 

The next colloquium with Christoph Koch from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin will be held as a hybrid event on December 02 at 10:15 CET.

We are very much looking forward to his talk since it will set the stage for fruitful discussions in many sessions. So come ready to ask questions! In case you missed it, you can watch the talk by Barend Mons on How to materialise FAIR here: https://www.fair-di.eu/fairdi-colloqium-videos

After a great start of our colloquium series (watch the talk by Barend Mons here: https://youtu.be/N4CBAqKQmQs), our next colloquium will take place on November 4 at 10:15 CET. 

Elsa Olivetti from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will talk about Text and Data Mining for Materials Development.

We are very much looking forward to her talk since it will set the stage for fruitful discussions in many sessions. So come ready to ask questions!

https://www.fair-di.eu/fairdi-colloqium-home

We are excited to have leading FAIR data specialist Barend Mons as our first speaker at the FAIR-DI - FAIRmat Colloquium on October 7!

Barend Mons is the Scientific Director of the GO FAIR Foundation, President of CODATA, and key person behind the renowned paper The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship. He will talk about "How to materialise FAIR". 

Registration required: https://www.fair-di.eu/fairdi-colloqium-home

FAIRmat is seeking several highly qualified and motivated colleagues to join the consortium and the dynamic NOMAD team towards shaping the future of materials science! We are looking for

Scientific Software Developers, 
IT-affine Materials Scientists, 
Administrative and Scientific Team Leaders,
a Scientific Project Manager, 
and a Project Assistant
Apply here: https://nomad-lab.eu/career/nomad-hub

Let's build a FAIR infrastructure together!

We made it! Today, the Joint Science Conference (GWK) announced its final funding decision about the National Research Data Infrastructure Program: FAIRmat is being funded as an NFDI consortium! A total of 10 consortia were chosen this year. You can read the official press release here: https://www.gwk-bonn.de/presseaktuelles/pressemitteilungen.

This success would not have been possible without your motivation and commitment, and we would like to thank all of you very much for that! It is great to know that a large community is behind the FAIRmat idea.

We are now looking forward to getting down to work with full vigour. As a first important step, we are now in the process of expanding the FAIRmat team with experts from different fields. Please, forward these job advertisements to potential candidates and colleagues: https://nomad-lab.eu/career/nomad-hub.

Let's build up a FAIR data infrastructure together!