Workforce development through Federal partnerships

MGI principal investigator meetings convene researchers funded across the Federal government’s MGI portfolio, providing an effective means for scientists and engineers to present and exchange information about their research activities, foster new ideas, establish collaborations, and discuss future research directions. The 2018 meeting included a competition to encourage partnerships among MGI-related activities sponsored by various Federal agencies.

Supplemental funding provided to the National Science Foundation's Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) teams enabled graduate students and academic post-docs to intern at Federal and national laboratories. Through use of MGI principles, these students have attacked contemporary materials challenges including the design of photocatalysts for water splitting with the Department of Energy's HydroGEN Energy Materials Network, the use of artificial intelligence to search for rare-earth-free magnetic materials with the Air Force Research Laboratory, the synergistic use of microscopy and computational modeling for the development of superalloys with NASA, and the data-driven discovery of organic semiconductors for electronic and light-based technologies with NIST.

Furthermore, a partnership among a multi-university DMREF team, NIST, and HydroGEN has been established to attack the important challenge of developing effective anion exchange membranes for high-performance fuel cells and electrolyzers, in support of H2@Scale efforts in deep decarbonization across sectors. Such coordination of MGI-sponsored research across multiple Federal funding agencies provides an effective mechanism for workforce development while synergistically focusing research efforts on critical societal materials needs.