Establishment of Material Research Data Platform... 64 Billion KRW Investment Starting Next Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Jo] A plan to establish a 'Materials Research Data Platform' is being promoted to drastically shorten the development period of innovative new materials and enhance research competitiveness in the materials field.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 19th that following the Materials, Parts, and Equipment Technology Special Committee held on the 17th, it will actively promote the establishment of a platform capable of collecting, sharing, and utilizing materials research data.

This initiative was prepared to respond to the paradigm shift as research and development linking computational science, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) has recently emerged as an innovative research methodology to improve the efficiency of new materials R&D, thereby enhancing research competitiveness in the materials field. The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to invest approximately 64 billion KRW over seven years from next year until 2027 to build the materials research data platform.

◆Establishment and Operation of the Materials Research Data Platform= First, the Ministry of Science and ICT will establish a system for collecting, managing, sharing, and utilizing materials research data so that research data can be systematically collected and utilized. To collect all data produced and utilized throughout the entire materials research process, data collection and management functions common to all fields will be modularized, and a collection and management system will be prepared to enable platform creation by application field.

The Ministry of Science and ICT will focus on collecting research data produced through nano and materials R&D projects worth about 100 billion KRW annually, but will also collect and manage individual researchers' data upon request. In addition, customized data management technologies will be developed, and functions to set data disclosure and sharing status, duration, and access rights will be provided to guarantee research data ownership and intellectual property rights. Research data utilization services such as automatic visualization, indexing-based related data analysis technology, and machine learning models will also be provided.

Along with this, a new materials research data storage and computing environment will be established to stably store, manage, and utilize research data. In the short term, by linking and utilizing the nation's 5th supercomputer, more than 2 million materials research data items held by domestic and international researchers will be collected within this year. In the mid-to-long term, a dedicated computing environment for the materials research data platform will be built and operated from 2022 using a super high-performance computing system currently being developed by domestic industry-academia-research teams.

◆New Materials Exploration and Design Based on the Materials Research Data Platform=The Ministry of Science and ICT will develop research data collection templates by application fields (three major application fields) where data types and formats are similar, and standardize (meta)data so that the collected and managed research data can be practically utilized for materials design. Using materials research data collected and produced by application field and specialized machine learning models for each field, it will support new materials exploration, design, and experimental verification, and to accelerate the early commercialization of data-driven base materials, it will link with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's Materials Information Bank DB (commercial materials and materials development process information, etc.) and support follow-up research for process development and commercialization of promising materials.

◆Creation of a Data-Driven Materials Research Innovation Ecosystem=To ensure continuous data-driven materials research, policies for research data disclosure and sharing will also be institutionalized. First, the Ministry of Science and ICT will mandate all researchers conducting materials R&D projects to register data on the materials research data platform when establishing a Data Management Plan (DMP), and will provide examples of DMP preparation by project or research field to improve researchers' convenience. Additionally, guidelines will be prepared within this year to systematize obligations such as source citation and tampering prevention when using materials research data shared by other researchers, as well as data access qualifications.

Furthermore, to establish and spread data-driven materials research innovation in the research field, workforce training and international cooperation will be significantly strengthened. The curriculum for utilizing materials research data linking materials-related departments and ICT-related departments in universities will be expanded, while simultaneously enhancing the data science utilization capabilities of existing materials researchers. Moreover, the ministry will proactively respond to international data standardization, strengthen cooperation with overseas research databases and networks, and enhance joint research with leading groups.

Yong Hong-taek, Director of the Research and Development Policy Office at the Ministry of Science and ICT, stated, "To achieve materials technology innovation by drastically shortening the period from new materials development to commercialization, building materials research data infrastructure and linking and utilizing computational science are most important. We will systematically and stably support the 'Materials Research Data Platform Establishment' going forward."

The Ministry of Science and ICT will form a standardization committee to promote data standardization by application field within the first half of the year and complete the construction of a web-based system that allows researchers to provide data more easily. In addition, it will actively promote improving overall efficiency in materials R&D from new materials discovery to commercialization by providing measurement and analysis protocols by material and physical property to solve bottlenecks at each stage of new materials discovery → synthesis/manufacturing (laboratory) → production (enterprise), and developing process design and verification platforms.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.