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.

Researchers at the NOMAD Laboratory at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have shed light of the microscopic mechanisms that determine thermal conduction in heat insulators. Powered by the advances made in the NOMAD CoE, their computational research has shown that even short-lived and microscopically localized defect structures have a substantial impact on macroscopic transport processes. This discovery could contribute to more energy-efficient technologies by allowing for the tailoring of nanoscale thermal insulators through defect engineering.

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 CSMB 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.