CSE DSI Hosts Successful Workshop on Data Science and Materials Science

CSE DSI held its first public workshop, Advancing Molecules & Materials via Data Science, on Friday, September 22. With 180 people registering for the workshop, interest far exceeded initial expectations. The organizing committee of Ellad Tadmor (Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics), Sapna Sarupria (Chemistry), Chris Bartel (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science), Ke Wang (Physics), and CSE DSI Associate Director Vuk Mandic (Physics) was delighted with the success of the workshop.

For the first time, CSE DSI brought in a number of experts to present on topics on the cutting edge of materials and data science. These included speakers from academia, national laboratories, and industry as well as program officers from the National Science Foundation: Laura Anderson (NSF), Maria Chan (Argonne National Lab), Dogus Cubuk (Google DeepMind), Elif Ertekin (UIUC), Rafa Goméz-Bombarelli (MIT), John Schlueter (NSF), Jennifer Schumacher (3M), Francesca Tavazza (Materials Measurement Science Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology), Fan Zhang (UT Dallas), and Fei Zhou (Lawrence Livermore National Lab). The one-day workshop featured three sessions with discussion periods following in both the morning and afternoon. The afternoon closed with a poster session featuring the work of several graduate students from the University of Minnesota. For a look at the agenda and participants, visit the conference website.

The workshop grew out of a year-long initiative by CSE DSI to bring together data scientists and materials sciences, whether they are working on designing proteins for drug delivery or nanomaterials. The College is particularly strong in the area of materials science and the presence of data science experts close by fosters collaborations in this relatively new area of materials science research. This work is sure to continue with the awarding of a $4.5 million NSF grant to apply machine learning to materials science.