Numerous technological advancements are driven by materials development, in fields as diverse as energy supply, environmental protection, information technology, or medicine and health. Solving these major societal challenges strongly depends on the acceleration of materials development.

At KIT, 37 PIs from 12 institutes have united in a joint initiative aiming at virtual materials design, which aspires to develop an information-driven approach towards predictive material simulations and reverse-engineering of materials and device components. This will enable experimental breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, biotechnology and materials science. At the core of this approach are scales bridging computational methods which are combined in a competitive platform for novel complex and hybrid materials. Due to the transdisciplinary nature of materials science, this requires an integrated approach combining the cross-cutting expertise from the different project partners. Ultimately this platform will enable end-users to systematically apply information-driven methods in product development in novel application areas and to exploit the resulting competitive advantages regarding the reduction of the R&D expenses and the product cycle.

This KIT initiative is a part of the Joint Lab “Virtual Materials Design” in the Helmholtz Research Field “Information” across the Helmholtz Programs “Materials Systems Engineering”, “Natural, Artificial and Cognitive Information Processing” and “Engineering Digital Futures”. The overarching goal is to develop and validate new methods for computational material and process development.

The projects of the virtual materials design platform aim at the acceleration of material development by information-guided design and synthesis automation; the provision of digital twins for materials, components, and devices; plus the development of a virtual research environment which makes accessible all cross-scale simulation methods and digital twins developed by the other projects.