DataLab: The Materials Informatics Podcast DataLab Materials Informatics Podcast

In this episode, Dr. Bryce Meredig and Dr. Arnold discuss:
The business case for adopting data-driven methodologies and materials informatics within materials and chemicals organizations Suggestions for kicking off digital initiatives within materials and chemicals organizations Cynthia’s wide-ranging career in the materials industry, and her perspective on the impact that data-driven R&D can have on the pace of innovation within an organization The similarities between Six Sigma and materials informatics adoption and implementation How materials informatics and a data strategy can help facilitate knowledge transfer within an organization  
“Start with where you have problems and opportunities, and ask what data can support delivery on these solutions and these opportunities.”  – Dr. Cynthia Arnold
 
Dr. Cynthia Arnold spent an over 30 year career in materials industries, leading technology development and innovation and marketing partnerships for diverse applications including medical, automotive, aerospace, electronics, building and construction and printing.  She most recently served as the Chief Technology Officer of the Valspar Corporation and as the Senior Vice President of Global Technology for Sherwin Williams, where she was responsible for a world-wide team of 1100 staff developing paints, coatings and associated technologies and services.  Prior to Valspar, Cynthia was the Chief Technology Officer at Sun Chemical, a leading producer of inks and pigments. Prior to that, she held technical leadership positions at Eastman Chemical and General Electric.
 
She served as a Sloan Executive Science & Engineering Fellow in the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy for several years, focused on industry-government technology alliances.  She is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science; a Board member of the Minnesota Zoo; and serves in advisory and consulting roles for a number of materials companies, including Carbon, Cabot, Citrine Informatics, and Milliken.
 
Dr. Bryce Meredig, is the host of DataLab: The Materials Informatics Podcast, and Chief Science Officer and co-founder of Citrine Informatics. Dr. Meredig researches the application of machine learning to materials science. He earned his PhD in materials science from Northwestern University, where he focused on materials informatics, and his BAS and MBA at Stanford University, where he is also on the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, including some of the earliest on applying machine learning (ML) to materials development. He was an Arjay Miller Scholar and Terman Fellow at Stanford, and a Presidential Fellow and NDSEG Fellow at Northwestern.
 
Connect with Dr. Bryce Meredig:
Twitter: @brycemeredig
Website: Citrine.io

Summary: Mayor Bill Peduto provides an overview of the history of Pittsburgh’s connection to advanced analytics and technology, and talks about why Pittsburgh has become a hub for artificial intelligence innovation.


In this episode, Bryce and Mayor Peduto discuss:
Pittsburgh’s transformation into a city at the forefront of AI, robotics, technology, and green energy How AI and big data have played a role in transforming Pittsburgh into a smart city How Mayor Peduto got involved with public service and Pittsburgh politics The role of education and training in encouraging Pittsburgh’s industrial and economic innovation The P4 framework - people, planet, place and performance - and its role in the changing landscape of Pittsburgh’s economy How the Mayor and the City of Pittsburgh use data to drive policy Pittsburgh’s approach to attracting and retaining a talented workforce “The transformation from a steel city to a modern manufacturing and technology hub happened over decades starting with the first robotics program at Carnegie Mellon in the 1970’s.”
Mayor William Peduto was elected to the office of Mayor of the City of Pittsburgh in the General Election on November 5, 2013, and took office as Pittsburgh’s 60th Mayor in January of 2014. Prior to taking office, he worked for 19 years on Pittsburgh City Council - seven years as a staffer then twelve years as a Member of Council. Since taking office, Mayor Peduto has lead a collaborative effort to make Pittsburgh a leading 21st Century city. The Peduto administration has partnered with the White House on numerous initiatives, resulting in direct access to federal support related to affordable housing, education, economic development, energy efficiency, immigration, manufacturing, community policing, workforce development, technology and transportation. In 2015 Mayor Peduto signed a unique agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to make the city a world leader in district energy production and Pittsburgh joined the UN's Compact of Mayors, a global coalition of climate leaders committed to local action and global impact.


Dr. Bryce Meredig, is the host of DataLab: The Materials Informatics Podcast, and Chief Science Officer and co-founder of Citrine Informatics. Dr. Meredig researches the application of machine learning to materials science. He earned his PhD in materials science from Northwestern University, where he focused on materials informatics, and his BAS and MBA at Stanford University, where he is also on the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, including some of the earliest on applying machine learning (ML) to materials development. He was an Arjay Miller Scholar and Terman Fellow at Stanford, and a Presidential Fellow and NDSEG Fellow at Northwestern.
 
Connect with Bryce:
Twitter: @brycemeredig
Website: Citrine.io

Summary: In this episode, Joerg Hellwig, Chief Digital Officer of LANXESS AG, provides an Industry perspective on how the acceleration of new product development plays a crucial role in a company’s success, and how data is a critical enabler of this acceleration.
 
In this episode, Dr. Bryce Meredig and Joerg Hellwig discuss:
Joerg’s career path and the responsibilities of his current role as a chief digital officer. How “digital transformation” has impacted the materials industry, and how to better integrate technology tools into R&D and manufacturing industries. Which human factors play a role in technology integration in the materials and chemicals industries, and how to change mindsets across an organization in a data-driven approach. How algorithms and machines can free up scientists to spend their time doing creative, critical work within an organization. The critical role that data-driven materials and chemical industries can play in creating a more sustainable world.  
“I’m very excited about using data-driven methods to embed recyclability and sustainability into the DNA of materials. We want to use AI to produce products which are both needed by the market and our customers, and fully recyclable.”
 
“Right now, how fast we can develop new products is unpredictable...we do 50, 100, 150 trials...This is painful, time consuming, and unpredictable...By incorporating data-driven methods, we define a different way of doing things that can change this unpredictability and allow us to gain speed.”
 
Joerg Hellwig began his career as a commercial trainee at Bayer AG. After spending several years in the US, he returned to LANXESS in Germany to restructure and sell its Synthetic Fibers business. Following an assignment at Reliance Industries in India, he came back as Managing Director of the Pigment business unit at LANXESS. Since 2017 Joerg has led the company’s Digital Transformation Initiative as Chief Digital Officer. The process focus areas include the digitization of production, the introduction of new tools and systems throughout the value chain, promoting the value of data as an institutional asset for the entire company, and the use of advanced analytics such as artificial intelligence to increase the speed of development. Joerg also leads the “New Work” cultural transformation program to support the skill and talent necessary for the transition to a digital organization. As a champion of new technologies at the company, Joerg is also responsible for exploring new business models. As such, he founded the start-up software company CheMondis and served as Managing Director and Supervisory Board member. CheMondis, now independent, has quickly become the leading online marketplace for the chemicals industry.




Dr. Bryce Meredig, is the host of DataLab: The Materials Informatics Podcast, and Chief Science Officer and co-founder of Citrine Informatics. Dr. Meredig researches the application of machine learning to materials science. He earned his PhD in materials science from Northwestern University, where he focused on materials informatics, and his BAS and MBA at Stanford University, where he is also on the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, including some of the earliest on applying machine learning (ML) to materials development. He was an Arjay Miller Scholar and Terman Fellow at Stanford, and a Presidential Fellow and NDSEG Fellow at Northwestern.
 
Connect with Bryce:
Twitter: @brycemeredig
Website: Citrine.io

Summary:  This episode focuses on Prof. Kristin Persson’s work directing the Materials Project, where she had her group have built an open-source materials informatics platform that reaches over 75,000 users worldwide.
 
In this episode, Dr. Bryce Meredig and Prof. Persson discuss:
The founding of the Materials Project and how it has grown into a widely used global open-source platform Recruiting and supporting a multidisciplinary group that touches materials science, chemistry, high-performance computing, and scalable web development The motivation for making all Materials Project data, applications, and algorithms open-source Success stories from the scientific community’s use of the Materials Project How researchers can best integrate computational methods with machine learning, lab-based synthesis and characterization, and commercial R&D  
“We’re building a community. In the end, the goal [of Materials Project] is to make our data and algorithms available to the public so we can accelerate materials design and accelerate solutions to some of our societal problems in renewable energy.” - Dr. Kristin Persson
 
Prof. Kristin Persson is the Director of the Materials Project, a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC-Berkeley. Known as a pioneer of materials genomics, Kristin co-founded the Materials Project in 2011 with Gerbrand Ceder at MIT. The Materials Project is now a multi-institution, multi-national effort to compute the properties of all known materials and to provide the data, analysis algorithms, and computational materials applications free of charge to the scientific community. The Materials Project aims to accelerate innovation in materials research, and has led to the discovery of new battery materials, transparent conducting oxides, and thermoelectric materials. Prof. Persson is the recipient of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Early Career Award for Women in Science, the 2013 LBNL Director’s Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and the TMS 2017 Early Career Faculty Fellow Award. She was also a 2018 Kavli Fellow.


Dr. Bryce Meredig, is the host of DataLab: The Materials Informatics Podcast, and Chief Science Officer and co-founder of Citrine Informatics.  Dr. Meredig researches the application of machine learning to materials science. He earned his PhD in materials science from Northwestern University, where he focused on materials informatics, and his BAS and MBA at Stanford University, where he is also on the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, including some of the earliest on applying machine learning (ML) to materials development. He was an Arjay Miller Scholar and Terman Fellow at Stanford, and a Presidential Fellow and NDSEG Fellow at Northwestern.
 
Connect with Bryce:
Twitter: @brycemeredig
Website: Citrine.io

Summary:  This episode focuses on Dr. Murray-Rust’s work in advocacy, community building, and software development to create a more open scientific community in chemistry and materials.
 
In this episode, Dr. Bryce Meredig and Prof. Murray-Rust discuss:
How Peter’s research background in crystallography inspired him to lead the development of tools and communities around open science and open data Lessons the materials and chemistry communities can learn from bioscience to create a more open community in scientific publishing The impact that open data and open research can have on accelerated industrial materials development The role of public funding and policymaking on encouraging a more open scientific community The importance of machine-readable data and semantic databases in the physical sciences Dr. Murray-Rust’s non-profit Content Mine, which seeks to unlock scientific data through advocacy, community, and software development  
“The multiplying factor of the Human Genome Project was over 100x. For every $1 million invested, it led to over $100 million of value created downstream...There’s no doubt that funding these sorts of things leads to a huge amount of realizable public good.” – Dr. Peter Murray-Rust
 
Dr. Peter Murray-Rust is the Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow Emeritus of Churchill College, where he brings together tools from computer science to chemistry, biosciences and earth sciences, integrating humans and machines in managing information.
 
Peter has held multiple faculty positions throughout his career, first as a lecturer at the University of Sterling, and later as Professor or Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham. He also led molecular graphics, computational chemistry, and protein structure determination efforts at the Glaxo Group Research.
 
In addition to his industrial and academic work in chemistry and molecular informatics, Peter is well-known for his support and work on open access and open data. He led the development of the Chemical Markup Language, co-authored the Panton Principles for Open Scientific data, and co-founded the Blue Obelisk community to promote open data and develop open source cheminformatics tools. In 2014, Dr. Murray-Rust was granted a Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship in support of his work leading the non-profit ContentMine, where he and his team develops tools to mine literature to make scientific data open and accessible.
Connect with Prof. Murray Rusk: LinkedIn
Faculty Website
 
Dr. Bryce Meredig, is the host of DataLab: The Materials Informatics Podcast, and Chief Science Officer and co-founder of Citrine Informatics.  Dr. Meredig researches the application of machine learning to materials science. He earned his PhD in materials science from Northwestern University, where he focused on materials informatics, and his BAS and MBA at Stanford University, where he is also on the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, including some of the earliest on applying machine learning (ML) to materials development. He was an Arjay Miller Scholar and Terman Fellow at Stanford, and a Presidential Fellow and NDSEG Fellow at Northwestern.
 
Connect with Bryce:
Twitter: @brycemeredig
Website: Citrine.io

Summary:  This episode highlights opportunities, challenges, and solutions around building a successful cross-functional, data-driven Research and Development team.


 
In this episode, Dr. Bryce Meredig and Prof. Mauro discuss:
Prof.Mauro’s early interest in computer programming, and how that shaped his career Challenges and opportunities for applying data-driven modeling techniques, like machine learning, to materials development Keys to a successful cross-functional materials research and development team The importance of a data-driven culture and strategy for commercial success How to bridge skill gaps within materials science through education, curriculum development, and collaborative research  
“A company that has a data-driven culture is going to be much more effective at developing better products, faster, and at a lower cost. [This culture] will be essential for their long-term survival.”
– Prof. John Mauro
 
After earning his PhD in glass science from Alfred University, Prof. John Mauro joined Corning Incorporated, where he eventually became the senior research manager of the Glass Research Department. He is the inventor or co-inventor of several new glass compositions for Corning, including Corning Gorilla® Glass products.

Dr. Mauro joined the faculty at Pennsylvania State University in 2017 and is currently a world-recognized expert in fundamental and applied glass science, statistical mechanics, computational and condensed matter physics, thermodynamics, and the topology of disordered networks.  

He is the inventor of new models for supercooled liquid and glass viscosity, glass structure and topology, relaxation behavior, and thermal and mechanical properties. He is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and has given more than 200 presentations at international conferences and seminars. In addition, he is editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.


 
Connect with Prof. John Mauro:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mauro-b6285b58/
Faculty Website: https://www.matse.psu.edu/directory/john-mauro
 
Dr. Bryce Meredig, Chief Science Officer and co-founder of Citrine Informatics, researches the application of machine learning to materials science. He earned his PhD in materials science from Northwestern University, where he focused on materials informatics, and his BAS and MBA at Stanford University, where he is also on the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, including some of the earliest on applying machine learning (ML) to materials development. He was an Arjay Miller Scholar and Terman Fellow at Stanford, and a Presidential Fellow and NDSEG Fellow at Northwestern.
 
Connect with Bryce:
Twitter: @brycemeredig
Website: Citrine.io
 
Please send comments, questions, and topics for upcoming episodes to podcast@datalabmi.com.