national advanced materials initiative

by Xin Wei Sha
White House, Materials Genome Initiative

(A genome is a set of information encoded in the language of DNA that serves as a blueprint for an organism’s growth and development. The word genome, when applied in non-biological contexts, connotes a fundamental building block toward a larger purpose.)

The Materials Genome Initiative is a new, multistakeholder effort to develop an infrastructure to accelerate advanced materials discovery and deployment in the United States. Over the last several decades there has been significant Federal investment in new experimental processes and techniques for designing advanced materials. This new focused initiative will better leverage existing Federal investments through the use of computational capabilities, data management, and an integrated approach to materials science and engineering.

See for example pp 9-11 of the MGI white paper for hints where AME could make a particular set of impacts informed by experimental research in more-than-human lived experience.

Specific work e.g. in active fibres / conductive fibres / functional fabrics  started near 20 years ago with folks in fiber computing (Starlab Brussels), and Georgia Tech (Jayaraman et al).  So the state of the art in knit structures and novel materials is getting results, technically.  See for example:

SHIMA SEIKI HAUTE TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY
http://drexel.edu/excite/research/shimaSeiki/

However as with that example, the cultural, aesthetic, and conceptual levels of the technical demos are quite naive, whereas the more aesthetically-informed work  with few exceptions does not have access to state of the art materials.  So there’s a lot of room for play.

cc. AME faculty, fabrication tech team

________________________________________________________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei, PhD • Professor and Director • School of Arts, Media and Engineering + Synthesis
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts + Fulton Schools of Engineering • ASU
skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
_________________________________________________________________________________________________