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Material Informatics & Data Science

Computational approaches to designing new materials have been developed at Northwestern in recent years, and these design methodologies can be directly applied to create new quantum materials at greatly reduced time and expense. These databases can be used for materials discovery through artificial intelligence based strategies and have led to discovery of topological insulators, Dirac semimetals, and Weyl semimetals. In parallel, first-principles calculations are able to predict symmetry, structure, and chemistry that support topological electronic states.

Northwestern’s Center for Hierarchical Material Design (CHiMaD) is a focal point—both nationally and internationally—for the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), and hosts an array of databases, such as the Open Quantum Materials Database, that connect atomic structure with electronic and optical material properties.

Affiliated Faculty