Dear colleagues in the MaterialDigital community,
Welcome to the second regular newsletter of the year!
Find out what topics accompanied the MaterialDigital initiative in spring and what awaits us in summer and late summer. We are particularly looking forward to our participation in EUROMAT in Spain in September and the upcoming MaterialDigital General Assembly in Berlin in November.
We hope you enjoy reading this issue!
From September 14th to 18th 2025, materials scientists from all over Europe will meet at FEMS EUROMAT in Granada - and the MaterialDigital platform will be there again.
To our community the Symposium D7 – Digital Materials: Rapid Materials, Experiments, Simulation Workflows, Ontologies and Interoperability should be of particular interest. It is co-organized by Prof. Christoph Eberl and Dr. Tilmann Hickel and is part of the overarching subject area D. Characterization, Modeling and Artificial Intelligence.
In addition to presentations, the MaterialDigital initiative will also have a booth at the conference. As usual, you will find an overview of all contributions from the MaterialDigital initiative at EUROMAT and space for professional exchange. Come and visit us at our booth.
We are looking forward to an exciting conference week!
The MaterialDigital community is coming together again: From November 26 to 28, 2025, we are pleased to invite you to the General Assembly at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin Lichterfelde/Steglitz.
You can expect:
Don't forget the key dates:
All information about the event and registration can be found on the Event Page. We have also compiled further details in the June Special-Newsletter.
We are looking forward to meeting you again in Berlin.
Following four years of intensive work, the research project “Life cycle of concrete - ontology development for the concrete production process chain - LeBeDigital” came to a successful conclusion with the final colloquium on June 4th 2025. The event was dedicated to central questions regarding the digitalization of material data in the concrete sector - a key topic for future developments in materials research and practice.
Technical and keynote speeches by leading experts from research, industry, standardization and funding institutions provided exciting insights into current approaches and challenges relating to ontology-based data structures, data quality and interdisciplinary knowledge transfer. The focus was particularly on the benefits of structured material data for modeling, simulation and AI-supported applications.
The lively participation, lively discussions and intensive exchange among the participants clearly showed how great the interest in the topic is - and how much potential, but also open work lies in the digital transformation of the construction industry. The colloquium made it clear that digitalization can only become an effective tool for sustainable construction with concrete if all relevant players work together.
From July 8th to 10th 2025, the MSE Research Data Forum of the Initiative NFDI-MatWerk took place in Siegburg - and MaterialDigital was represented by numerous participants.
The event brought together stakeholders from materials science and engineering with members of the NFDI-MatWerk consortium. The focus was on current developments and challenges relating to research data management (RDM) in MSE.
The first day of the event focused on simulation workflows and the associated tools and concepts. The second day focused on experimental workflows, thermodynamic models and other tools and frameworks for data transformation. The third day focused on the use of machine learning workflows and the potential contribution of Large Language Models (LLMs).
One of the key findings was the need to keep metadata and data as complete and structured as possible throughout the entire research process. LLMs were seen as a promising approach for future applications in research data management. The meeting also showed that despite different starting points in industry and science, there are many common challenges. Although solutions already exist for specific use cases, these need to be geared more strongly towards overarching usability. The first steps in this direction are already being taken - however, a common understanding within the specialist community will be crucial in order to work towards generalizable frameworks instead of developing specific individual solutions in parallel. This applies in particular to the sustainable handling of metadata and structured data.
You can find a review of organizer the on the website of NFDI-MatWerk.
At the beginning of this year, five projects began their activities in the third round of the MaterialDigital Initiative. We actively support the MD3 projects in their initial phase and take part in their kick-off events. In this way, we ensure that they receive the best possible support right from the start and that their integration into the initiative is successful.
Following our report on the first DiStEl meeting in our last newsletter, we would like to present four more MD3-Projects here:
The joint project GlasAgent started on January 1st 2025. The official kick-off meeting took place on March 20th and 21st at Schott AG in Mainz. The project covers the value chain from glass production to glass recycling. The project partners are working on the automation of process steps, the development and optimization of new processes and efficient glass development processes. This includes characterization, simulation and evaluation processes. The aim is to generate accelerated glass development for customized glass, taking material cycles into account right from the beginning. Smart workflows are used to link the necessary work sensibly and efficiently and exploit the full potential of digitalization. Digital twins and process simulations support experimental work, while atomistic simulations provide insights into material physics and behavior. The vision is that in future, glass developers will be able to oversee and initiate complex systems and tasks from the computer with the help of the GlasAgent chatbot. More details about the consortium and the project work can be found in the presentation “Glass Synthesis in the Digital Age”, which Dr. Leopold Talirz gave at MaterialsWeek 2025 in Frankfurt on April 4th 2025. A short version can be found on the GlasAgent project website.
The kick-off meeting of the joint project DILEMA-K also took place on March 20th and 21st 2025 at CeramTec GmbH's location in Lauf. The overall objective of the eleven DILEMA-K project partners is to develop tools for data-based material, technology, component and application development of functional ceramic materials and components. At this meeting, the first process steps were discussed using two exemplary selected material groups; on the one hand, lead-free piezoceramic materials of the BNT-BT base system with their texturing technology and, on the other hand, ferrite-based multilayer components.
Using the production of a connector as an example, the KupferDigital2 joint project is collecting relevant data on the entire life cycle of a characteristic copper alloy component. During the first project meeting at Wieland Electric in Bamberg from March 25th to 27th 2025 the fourteen project partners jointly defined the next steps, formed project subgroups and held intensive discussions on digital tools for interoperable data exchange. In this joint project, a process chain of industrial connector production is being digitized with semantic data, thus laying the foundation for a more efficient and, above all, more sustainable production of the future. The preliminary work of the KupferDigital project serves as the basis for the KupferDigital2 project and is described in the overview article “KupferDigital: Ontology-Based Digital Representation for the Copper Life Cycle”.
The official kick-off meeting of the joint project DIPONI took place on May 21st 2025 at the German Institute of Rubber Technology (DIK) in Hannover. The aim of the DIPONI project is to digitally map the entire rubber life cycle and provide digital tools that can control the entire continuous manufacturing process and operate it at the optimum quality level. Based on the predecessor projects DIGITRUBBER and InSuKa, the product life cycle from the semi-finished product to the molded part to recycling is being completed, with a particular focus on waste avoidance. In order to overcome disciplinary boundaries, the interoperability of the process (both on an experimental and semantic ontology-specific level) is evaluated with regard to the material class of polyacrylates. This material class requires a process chain similar to rubber in terms of the processing machines. However, technical terms are defined differently and must be adapted to the FAIR principles and harmonized with the rubber-specific ontology.
The PMD-X “Durchstichprojekte” were launched on July 1st 2025. These are intended to showcase the connection between the MaterialDigital world and the X worlds. The “cut-through” of the two applications shows how business models can be implemented with the support of material-specific digitalization approaches and enables Germany and Europe to play a shaping role in this area.
The first project, EDCar (Automotive End-of-Life Data Exchange for Circular Economy), is about linking the MaterialDigital (PMD) platform with Gaia-X/Manufacturing-X ecosystems (especially Catena-X) in order to establish an open, secure and material-focused data exchange. The benefits are shown by demonstrating two use cases (“Speedboats”). On the one hand, the end-of-life assessment for optimized dismantling and recycling strategies and, on the other hand, the ‘Feedback to Design’ for the development of recyclable vehicle components.
EDCar is intended to contribute to the achievement of climate targets through improved recycling (e.g. reduction of primary raw material requirements) and the fulfillment of regulatory requirements (e.g. digital product passport, EU circular economy strategy). In addition, EDCar aims to strengthen the competitiveness of the German automotive industry through digitalization and sustainability.
The second project PMD-X-MAPRO (cross-company material data and material simulation in production) is about the digital, standardized and automated transfer of machine-readable material data for the processing and material simulation of materials. The aim is to achieve a cross-industry solution for digital material data with the lowest possible adaptation costs by linking semantic technologies of PMD with data spaces and digital twins of the X-world. This is exemplified by material data along the steel processing chain and focuses on the adaptation and optimization of manufacturing processes as well as the bi-directional exchange of material data between companies.
Material data and its use in a data room allows manufacturing processes to be optimized more quickly and resources to be saved.
The official kick-off of the projects took place on July 16th 2025 at the VDI-TZ in Duesseldorf (Fig.1). The very intensive exchange between the participants from industry and academia laid the foundation for an exciting project duration. Within just 12 months, this is very short timeframe which requires close timing and intensive and structured cooperation between all participants. Now the projects must quickly find their way into productive working mode. The first results of the work will be presented at the MaterialDigital plenary meeting in Berlin in November.
Since May 2025, a new element has been added to PMD's data infrastructure. In a world where FAIR data is becoming increasingly important, we offer you a user-friendly portal through which you can share and organize your data securely and efficiently. The MaterialDigital DataPortal serves as a platform for publishing, managing and sharing material datasets. It was developed to promote the reuse of datasets and support semantic interoperability.
The DataPortal is based on the web-based data catalog software CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network) and offers an intuitive user interface. The most important features of the MaterialDigital DataPortal include decentralized data storage, where the data remains with you and is referenced in the DataPortal or is handled by your own CKAN instance. It also enables simple data management, as you can upload your data records reduced to metadata in various formats and manage them centrally. Access control will be implemented using various access rights for identities from the PMD-SSO. You can also flexibly share your data records with colleagues or the public as required.
What happens next? We are happy when MaterialDigital projects use the DataPortal to make data and metadata available to the MSE community. The amount of data is expected to grow, and we are striving to adapt the functionality of the DataPortal to the needs of FAIR data publication projects. If you are interested in making your data discoverable in the DataPortal, please contact us at info@material-digital.de.
In the recent months, our monthly community meetings have once again provided an opportunity to gain insights into projects and developments within the MaterialDigital Initiative:
In April, Markus Schilling from the Ontology team presented the MaterialDigital Core Ontology (PMDco) platform. In his presentation, he gave an overview of the central functions of PMDco and showed how the mid-level ontology helps to create a common language for the digital description of materials. He then gave a tour of the associated GitHub repository.
In June, Martin Kördel from the OntOMat project presented approaches to the digital representation of materials from an industrial perspective. His presentation showed how standardized digital models and harmonized ontologies contribute to improving data quality - and thus pave the way for AI-supported innovations in material and process development.
At the July meeting, Tilmann Hickel and Tarakeshwar Lakshmipathy from the workflow group gave a practical insight into the development and management of workflows. A compact overview of the initiative's workflow environments was followed by a live demonstration showing how to create a workflow using pyiron. The first part of the talk was recorded and can be accessed via this link after you log in via SSO.
If you would like to find out more about installing pyiron and the first steps in creating workflows with pyiron, you will find a growing collection of helpful introductory videos on the MaterialDigital YouTube channel. Further content is already in preparation.
We look forward to the upcoming meetings - online and in person! If you would like to be added to the community mailing list and come to our meetings, please write to us using community@material-digital.de.
The Workflow-Workshop (June 25th-26th in Berlin at BAM) focused on the topic Interoperability of workflow solutions. Both conceptual questions were discussed - such as: What are the essential elements of a workflow? and What do all workflow solutions have in common? - as well as programming aspects of the interoperability of different systems. In addition to PMD's own solutions pyiron and SimStack, established projects such as AiiDA, PerQueue and others were also taken into account. Two central components are currently being developed to standardize the workflow language: python-workflow-definition for defining execution sequences and semantikon for describing workflow recipes. Concrete results will be published in the corresponding Git repositories as well as in the upcoming AEM Special Issue.
At the workshop, it was decided to set up a working group on the topic of Large Language Models (LLMs). The aim is to address the following issues, among others:
We kindly invite you to the regular online meetings of the Workflow Group (every second Friday) and the Ontology Integration Group (every Thursday). In contrast to the previous meetings, which mainly dealt with overarching project topics, the current focus is on specific implementation issues. We would be particularly pleased to receive contributions from specific use cases. Contact us via the contact form on our website.
Work on the PMDco continues to progress. Following the pre-release of version 3.0 (PMDco 3.0.0-alpha2), the focus continues to be on deepening the content and sharpening the methodology of the ontology. Individual concepts will be further differentiated, while the axiomatics will be revised and expanded in order to achieve greater semantic depth and richness. Central topics in this context are the semantic representation of workflows (computational methods) and the modeling of materials, material classes and their functions. This iterative development process is still ongoing and thrives on intensive technical exchange.
We particularly invite you to actively participate - especially via our open Ontology Playground (registration), which you can join at any time! This is an excellent opportunity to actively help shape the development process of the ontology and gain valuable insights into ontology development.
In addition to the LeBeDigital final colloquium, PMD was also recently represented at the TMS Specialty Congress 2025 in Anaheim (California, USA). New contacts were made there and existing collaborations intensified. The conference focused on data-driven approaches in materials research: machine learning for 3D microstructure analysis, image-based segmentation and defect detection as well as new concepts for coupling experiment and simulation (ICME) were presented. In particular, tools such as pinax (Specialty Congress 2025 presentation contribution) showed how digital workflows for high-throughput designs interact with data management infrastructures. The contributions impressively emphasized that AI-based methods and semantically structured data are increasingly forming the backbone of accelerated, intelligent material development.
The next PMD hackathon to promote semantic interoperability is coming up: From October 13th to 15th 2025 (“from Lunch to Lunch”) we warmly invite you again to BAM in Berlin (Lichterfelde West / Steglitz-Zehlendorf). This time, the focus will be on the further development of the PMDco, its general organization and joint publication activities. The hackathon offers an open platform for creative collaboration, intensive discussions and practical ontology engineering. We are looking forward to committed participants and inspiring days! Registration is already open on the event page of the MaterialDigital website.
We invite you to read the latest publication from the DiStEL project:
The Special Issue „Digitalization in Materials Science and Engineering“ is now also available as print version. Copies will be available for you to view at the MaterialDigital General Assembly in November.
If you also have publications from your project, please send them to us at community@material-digital.de. We will share them with the community and ensure that your research is visible.
Discover the first Newsletter of the DigiChrom project! It introduces the project, which uses digital methods to analyze the relationships between process parameters, layer structure and properties in chromium deposition. Would you like to receive the newsletter directly? You will find information on how to join the mailing list in the current issue. In future, you can also access the DigiChrom newsletter via the project website.
From 11th - 13th March 2026 the 'Symposium Verbundwerkstoffe und Werkstoffverbunde' takes places - you can participate hybrid and on site in Chemnitz.
One focus that could be of particular interest to our community is Focusarea 06: 'Material- und Strukturdigitalisierung'.
Abstracts for presentations and posters can be submitted until August 31st 2025 - the call is also explicitly aimed at young scientists.
We hope you enjoyed the newsletter - keep in touch with us: Follow us on LinkedIn and visit our website to stay up to date.
If you have any questions, you can contact us at any time at info@material-digital.de or via our direct contact persons.
We wish you happy summer days!
The PMD team
