The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has selected a consortium led by Northwestern University to establish a new NIST-sponsored center of excellence for advanced materials research. The new Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD) will be funded in part by a $25 million award from NIST over five years.

Other members of the CHiMaD consortium include –

The University of Chicago,
The Northwestern-Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering
The Computation Institute (a partnership between the University of Chicago and Argonne)

And the project also involves –

QuesTek Innovations (a small business spin-off of Northwestern University)
ASM International
Fayetteville State University

“The launch of this new center represents a major milestone in support of the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) and our national goal of doubling the pace of discovery and development of novel materials,” said Cyrus Wadia, assistant director for Clean Energy and Materials R&D at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

As NIST points out in the announcement, it’s estimated that the average time from laboratory discovery of a new material to its first commercial use can take up to 20 years. The US MGI aims to halve that.

Read the full story on NIST Tech Beat.

Other resources on the web

Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering (IOPscience)