Amit Goyal serves on National Academies’ committee for NSF's work on Materials Genome Initiative

BUFFALO, N.Y. – University at Buffalo materials scientist Amit Goyal recently served on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee that issued a consensus study report, “NSF Efforts to Achieve the Nation's Vision for the Materials Genome Initiative.”

Launched in 2011, the federal, multi-agency Materials Genome Initiative aims to reduce the time and cost it takes to discover and utilize new materials for medicine, computing and other sectors.

The National Science Foundation’s Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer Our Future (DMREF) is part of this effort. DMREF is developing the fundamental science, workforce, and computational and experimental tools needed for materials development.

The 19-member National Academies committee that included Goyal, who is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, was tasked with reviewing the progress of DMREF and providing guidance on future opportunities and directions.

“Tremendous progress in materials science, data science and materials informatics have been made since the launch of the Materials Genome Initiative,” said Goyal, a SUNY Distinguished Professor and SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. “We must continue this progress to find transformative solutions to the world’s most challenging technological problems. Addressing many of these problems requires development of materials innovations and technologies across the technology readiness levels to fully realize the vision of the Materials Genome Initiative.”

Goyal was the only member of NASEM’s National Materials and Manufacturing Board to serve on the committee, which met more than 60 times over 18 months.

The committee spoke with leading materials scientists from academia, national laboratories and industry. The committee also obtained input from faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students funded by DMREF. And it engaged with top materials science academic departments in the U.S., as well as prominent international programs performing work related to the Materials Genome Initiative.

The 166-page report, NSF Efforts to Achieve the Nation’s Vision for the Materials Genome Initiative: Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer Our Future (DMREF), was released earlier this year. It includes nine key findings and eight recommendations to further the impact of DMREF.

Goyal is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the Materials Research Society (MRS), the American Physical Society (APS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Ceramic Society (ACERS), the American Society of Metals (ASM), the World Innovation Foundation (WIF),  the Institute of Physics (IOP), and the World Technology Network (WTN) and the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS).