Materials are
the common feedstock of industries that translate physical sciences
into technology. This transmutation of science to technology
accounts for the vast material world around us, including the
pervasive machinery and infrastructure of industry and commerce.
The discipline of this transformation is materials science. Like
medicine and informatics before it, materials science has evolved
to become a confluent discipline. It is the confluence of physical
sciences; like medicine is the confluence of biological sciences
and informatics is the confluence of computer sciences. These
polyglot disciplines bestride basic science and technology and
gear the forces of science for technological applications. Materials
science specifically commingles the flow of physical sciences,
coordinates their momentum, and converts their collective impetus
to technological drive. Thus, materials science is a prime mover
of industry.
As a coupler of science and technology, and a principal force of industry, materials science is innately practical. The functional exertion of the discipline is materials engineering, which has the no-nonsense intent of harnessing the physical sciences for technological gain. A similar interplay exists between biological sciences and bioengineering and between computer sciences and electrical engineering. Technological application is the ultimate measure of success in materials science. Unless a material has a profitable application, for example, it is simply a novelty in search of utility. Grand theories and cosmic concepts are not the currency of materials science. The “big bang” in the field is commercial success. This intrinsic connection to industrial commerce is what distinguishes the discipline as a pivotal 21st century branch of science.
Materials
Research & Development
This connection
to industry and commerce has profound implications for materials
research and development (R&D). It means that materials research
must have marketplace relevance and materials development must
be attuned to marketplace demand. The infrastructure and organization
of materials R&D must bestride basic research and practical
development, and must be geared to technological advancement
and commercial success. Management of the R&D process must
exploit the polyglot nature of the discipline and reflect an
abiding appreciation for its innate practicality as the prime
mover of material progress. An enduring awareness of the foregoing
factors should guide the deployment of the financial, physical,
and managerial resources dedicated to materials R&D by the
European Union (EU). These expenditures should be attuned to
technological progress, without becoming entangled with corporate
motivations to meet the quarterly expectations of stockholders
and financial market makers.
The EU’s prime R&D assets are the individuals who practice, and may wish to practice, materials science. These individuals are engaged in universities, research institutes, industry, commerce, and schools across Europe. Consistent with past practices, the EU should budget resources to afford these individuals diverse opportunities to contribute to materials science in its modern context. But, to optimize its return on investment in this context, the EU should change the venue in which these opportunities are proffered. It should recognize that the environs of progress in science generally have shifted from the cloisters to the marketplace, where ideas and ambitions blend with an entrepreneurial spirit to inspire imagination and innovation. The EU should capitalize on this volatile mixture to heat new hothouses of innovation where contributions to materials science can germinate. Such incubators are the new environs where individuals grow ideas into innovations that drive technology and create the “big bang” of commercial success as the reward for their contributions.
Technology
Incubation
Incubators are a known technique that only now provides a practical means to nurture advances in materials science. In the past, incubators were not practical because there was not a common platform for innovation in the field, like the Internet provides a platform for innovation in informatics and the genome provides a platform for innovation in medicine. With the recent emergence of Reflexive Materials Technology™ (RMT™), materials science has a comparable platform. RMT provides a broad base for innovation because of its potential for application across the materials spectrum and its economical methods for manufacturing commercial products from metals, plastics, ceramics, composites, and other materials, including biomaterials. With RMT as its platform, the EU could focus its assets and resources to germinate homegrown advances in materials science. These advances could be expected to improve the quality of life throughout Europe and stimulate economic growth and prosperity across the continent.
By focusing expenditures
for materials R&D on generating technological innovations
with the potential for serving commercial markets, the EU could
expect industry to be an enthusiastic participant and co-investor
in this pan-European initiative. Universities and research institutes
might also be active investors and, naturally, would be aggressive
participants. More important, a number of fresh, new innovators
may be induced to enter the field and apply their energies to
accelerate the pace of advances in materials science. This critical
mass of government, industry, academia, and entrepreneurs likely
would attract attention and draw capital from private investors
eager to underwrite the promise of significant commercial innovations.
History suggests that this potent mix of interests, with RMT
as its common platform, could coalesce to form a power infrastructure
for innovation in the field, with the potential to propel the
EU to outright leadership in materials science.
European Network
for Materials Innovation (ENMI)
To generate the greatest benefit, this potent alliance of government, industry, academia, entrepreneurs, and private capital would require a robust physical infrastructure to support interaction and association, including fixed bases for the initiation and conduct of joint undertakings. These diverse participants would have to be “wired” for rapid communications and supported by a brick-and-mortar infrastructure that would promote face-to-face interactions to foster the vigorous exchange of ideas, conjectures, insights, knowledge, and proposals. This “wired” network, called the European Network for Materials Innovation (ENMI), would foment opportunities ranging from basic research to investment prospects. Nodes of physical facilities to nurture these diverse prospects would anchor the Network. The aggregate effect would be to create a modern bazaar where the propitious interplay of science, entrepreneurship, and capital could generate technological gains and commercial rewards for innovators and their underwriters and enhance the competitiveness of European companies in global markets.
ENMI Centres
of Excellence
Among ENMI brick-and-mortar facilities would be major research centres that would find their origins in the prerequisite to mesh fundamental materials R&D with major industrial needs to achieve the “big bang” of commercial success. At these Centres of Excellence the mélange of science, entrepreneurship, and capital would cultivate reward-driven excellence in R&D that gears basic science for technological achievement. Organizations from industry, academia, government, and capital markets, among others, could have space at these pan-European Centres of Excellence in order work together on long-, medium-, and short-term materials R&D projects. Undergraduate to post-doctoral students would participate in these projects, reflecting a major commitment of the Centres to educational excellence in physical sciences and business. All participants at the Centres would be committed to the expansion of knowledge and to the complementary objectives of technological advancement and the highest returns on public and private capital investments in Centre undertakings. The Centres would be organized according to the following echelons:
ENMI Network
Headquarters
The ENMI Network Headquarters would act as the managerial and promotional hub of ENMI. It would foster interaction and association among government, industry, academia, research institutes, financial organizations, and entrepreneurial ventures through the Centres of Excellence. A key responsibility of the Headquarters would be to promote the aspirations of the Centres to these diverse organizations to secure their participation in and underwriting for the R&D and educational initiatives of the Centres. To support a broad spectrum of materials R&D activities at the Centres, the Headquarters would be organized along industry (e.g., automotive, aerospace, electronics) and government (e.g., science, energy, defense) lines. The Headquarters organization would build and maintain the ENMI Communications System (see below) and related infrastructure and would provide management oversight, planning, budgetary, logistical, and related support to the Centres. The Headquarters would draw inspiration from the extraordinary success of the Max-Planck-Institutes over the past half-century in organizing multi-disciplinary teams for fundamental R&D with a strategic intent.
Centres
of Excellence in Materials Research
Centres of Excellence in Materials Research would foster research aimed at fundamental breakthroughs of major technological significance. A primary focus would be broad-based research to develop new materials, structures, and products that fully exploit the structural and process advantages of RMT. The Centres would be organized by sub-disciplines (e.g., physics, chemistry, mathematics) and would provide critical facilities for long-term, interdisciplinary materials research with marketplace relevance. Facilities at the Centres would provide unique research capabilities that otherwise would be too expensive for any one entity to underwrite. These could include accelerator and reactor-based neutron sources, synchrotron radiation sources, high-energy electron microscopes, high-magnetic superconductors, nano-materials fabrication equipment, and supercomputers. The Centres world be sited at central locations across Europe and would be expected to attract the world’s leading scientists from industry, research institutes, academia, government, and private organizations. Together, these scientists would conduct joint materials research, supported by public and private capital, with a strong emphasis on the development and incubation of breakthroughs with the potential to produce quantum gains in materials performance on a commercial scale.
Centres
of Excellence in Materials Development
Centres of Excellence in Materials Development would foster research for the broad-based development of less expensive, less technical, and more abundant materials for use in re-engineering existing products and structures with RMT. Materials would include metals, plastics, ceramics, composites, alloys and blends, and biomaterials. These Centres would be located throughout Europe and would be organized by major industry sectors (e.g. motor vehicles, aerospace, civil construction). The Centres would concentrate on medium-term, interdisciplinary R&D with a focus on satisfying industry demand for materials that make commercial products and structures lighter, stronger, safer, and more affordable. At these Centres, graduate students from across Europe and scientists from industry, research institutes, academia, government, and private organizations would have access to equipment for supramolecular research, high performance computing, and materials testing, manufacturing, repair, and recycling**, among other facilities for materials and related product development. These Centres would emphasize the development and incubation of materials with potential for commercial applications.
Centres
of Materials Technology & Entrepreneurship
Centres of Materials Technology & Entrepreneurship would foster the training and use of RMT to re-engineer existing products and structures using current materials (e.g., metals, plastics, ceramics, composites, alloys and blends, biomaterials). These Centres would be organized by sub-disciplines (e.g., physics, chemistry, mathematics). Centre facilities would be located at universities throughout Europe. Undergraduates would join with scientists from industry, research institutes, academia, government, and private organizations at these Centres to apply RMT to re-engineer existing products and structures. The curricular focus at these Centres would be on the physical sciences and the transmutation of these sciences for technological applications using RMT. To foster this curricular agenda, undergraduate students would use their classroom-based knowledge of physical sciences and business to participate in applying RMT to re-engineer known commercial products and structures, with a strong emphasis on business incubation and development. Both students and scientists participating in projects at these Centres would be prepared to bring their re-engineered products to the commercial market via entrepreneurial ventures with capital support from industry and private organizations.
ENMI Communications
System
A state-of-the-art communications system should “wire” the various virtual, physical, and human nodes of the ENMI network into an Internet community. At a minimum, it should afford voice and data communications, video conferencing, and synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. Properly installed, maintained, and operated, this system would provide a level of interaction and knowledge transfer among and between ENMI participants on a scale that is not achievable otherwise. This suggests that this communications system also should be equipped to provide access to a central ENMI knowledge base. Creation of this knowledge base would require the ongoing compilation and organization of the massive amount of data and information generated by the numerous ENMI participants. The challenge would be to create a unified knowledge base from data and information received in a multitude of formats, languages, and configurations.
Construction
of this central knowledge base could be worth the investment,
if only to preclude duplication of efforts among ENMI participants.
Otherwise, it could be expected to be an excellent educational
tool and a vehicle for more rapid technological advancement.
To be of optimal value, this knowledge base would have to be
functional, scalable, and accurate in its management of a limitless
combination of content-to-content, content-to-people, and people-to-people
interactions. Commercial software is available to handle such
a large-scale knowledge management task. Thus, an ENMI central
knowledge base should be a primary node on the communications
system linking the ENMI Internet community.
ENMI Education
Initiatives
A primary mission of ENMI would be to produce materials scientists and engineers with sufficient business acumen to assume leadership roles in industry, academia, and research. The educational curricula of participating ENMI universities would be driven by discovery in the physical sciences and focused for innovation on the RMT platform. In support of this mission, ENMI universities would cooperate and collaborate with industry to mesh the cultures of academia and industry, for technological innovation. An example of such a program is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Leaders for Manufacturing and System Design and Management Programs sponsored by MIT’s Sloan School of Management, the MIT School of Engineering, and over 20 industry partners. As in this program, ENMI universities would provide students opportunities to participate in projects that allow them to learn and apply project management concepts and techniques, including project control, planning, estimating, resource management, change management, risk management, and quality assurance. With the knowledge and confidence that students would gain through hands-on participation, they would be prepared to pursue the “big bang” of commercial success either at an ENMI Centre of Excellence or in industry, academia, or commerce (e.g., as independent entrepreneurs).
Beyond the undergraduate and graduate levels, participating ENMI universities should offer professional practitioners’ continuing education opportunities to refresh and expand their knowledge. Continuing education at ENMI universities and Centres of Excellence would provide the opportunity for professional growth through immersion in an environment of discovery and innovation, on the firm and propitious platform of RMT, with the potential for the personal rewards of commercial success.
Conclusion
Materials science
has found its base for advancement in the 21st Century. It is
broad enough to be a platform on which all the diverse interests
in the discipline can coalesce to form an infrastructure for
unbounded innovation and concomitant commercial reward. The base
is RMT, a new enabling technology that is the synthesis of the
major structural innovations before it. RMT offers the materials
science community the immediate potential to achieve quantum
gains in materials performance and to solidify the discipline
in the scientific firmament as a confluent discipline, along
side medicine and informatics, among a few others. The European
Network for Materials Innovation could be the vehicle for coordination
of the multitudinous individual efforts to achieve these gains
under the leadership of the EU. However, whether ENMI or another
entity is the organizing force, the opportunity for extraordinary
advances in materials science is ripe and a solid platform is
present. It only remains for someone to seize this moment in
time and write the history of materials science in this century.
Parameters for an
ENMI Centre of Excellence.
(Click image to see larger version.)
*
Private Communication to Max Planck Institute as contribution
to Chapter 8 "Materials Science in Europe" and Chapter
9 "Materials Science and Basic Research in Europe: Conclusions
and Recommendations" of the European White Book on Fundamental
Research in Materials Science.
**
See the diagrams that accompany Materials for Transport Research Programmes
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