Like that silicon in the 70’s  led to the modern information      technology   industry,the development of advanced materials will fuel many of the emerging industries that will address challenges in energy,defense,ceramic, health care and other areas.

Prepared by an ad hoc group of the National Science and Technology Council, this initiative  proposes a new national infrastructure for data sharing and analysis that  will provide a greatly enhanced knowledge base to scientists and engineers designing new materials.

What is a genome?

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.

What is the challenge?

In the 1970s silicon led to the modern information technology industry,in much the same way advanced materials could fuel emerging multi-billion-dollar  industries aimed at addressing challenges in energy, defense,ceramic and human welfare. Since the 1980s, technological change and economic progress have grown ever more dependent on new materials developments.To  secure its competitive advantage in global markets and succeed in the future of advanced materials development and deployment, the United States must operate both faster  and at lower cost than is possible today.

At present, the time frame for incorporating new classes of materials into applications is remarkably long, typically about 10 to 20 years from initial research to first use. For example, the lithium ion battery, which is ubiquitous in today’s portable electronic devices, altered the landscape of modern information technologies; however, it took 20 years to move these batteries from a laboratory concept proposed in  the mid 1970s to wide market adoption and use in the late 1990s.

While it is difficult to anticipate the actual reduction in development time that will result from this initiative, our goal is to achieve a time reduction of greater than 50 percent.

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