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.

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.