Human Health and Welfare | Materials Genome Initiative

Advanced materials are critical to the continuous provision of affordable, abundant, and environmentally responsible life essentials, including food, water, shelter, and healthcare commodities. For example, emerging biocompatible materials are likely to continue to play a crucial role in technology advancements for making targeted medical devices, smart prostheses, and cultivating artificial organs. Organic and solidstate sensors support medical diagnostic tools and in vivo pharmaceutical products delivery, and novel chemistries advance delivery and function of medications. New separation technologies enable broader access to clean drinking water, a major global health issue. Applying MGI principles to the development of these technologies will allow continued U.S. global leadership in providing quality of life for humanity

PRedictive Integrated Structural Materials Science (PRISMS) Center

At the PRISMS Center integration drives everything we do. Our science is integrated with our computational codes and with the results from our experimentalists who identify new phenomena and fill in missing details. Our Materials Commons repository allows groups to collaborate and share data and provide it to the broader technical community. And our computational software is seamlessly integrating the latest multi-length scale scientific software into open source codes.

MGI Partner(s):

Department of Energy (DOE)

Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

The Materials Project

Harnessing the power of supercomputing and state of the art electronic structure methods, the Materials Project provides open web-based access to computed information on known and predicted materials as well as powerful analysis tools to inspire and design novel materials.

MGI Partner(s):

Department of Energy (DOE)

Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Development and application of innovative methods for quantification of hexavalent chromium in soils

A team of researchers in the USGS Minerals Program is improving and expanding the available methods for direct quantification of hexavalent chromium [Cr(VI)] in solids using innovative techniques. Synchrotron-based X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is currently the best available technique for direct quantification of Cr(VI) in solids at trace (ppm) levels and in phases lacking long-range atomic order. The USGS group has developed semi-automated peak-fitting methods to overcome user bias in this approach to quantifying Cr(VI).

MGI Partner(s):

Department of the Interior (DOI)

United States Geological Survey (USGS)