Materials Informatics for Data-Driven Design

Traditional materials discovery is often slow and relies heavily on trial-and-error experimentation. Materials informatics changes this by leveraging data science, machine learning, and computational tools to design, analyze, and discover materials at unprecedented speeds. This course guides you through the foundational concepts of materials informatics, showing you how to convert physical material structures into digital data that algorithms can analyze. You will understand how to build predictive models, utilize public materials databases, and apply modern data-driven workflows to accelerate development across different structural scales. What you'll learn: - Understand the core principles of materials informatics and how data science intersects with physical materials chemistry. - Represent material structures digitally using crystal and molecular descriptors, fingerprints, and feature engineering. - Apply machine learning algorithms to predict mechanical, thermal, and electronic properties from materials data. - Navigate and extract valuable information from open-access materials databases and repositories. - Explore active learning and Bayesian optimization strategies for efficient materials discovery. - Analyze hierarchical material structures spanning multiple length scales using computational modeling techniques. You will start with the fundamental definitions of materials data and representation before moving into practical computational workflows. Through clear written explanations, structured code snippets, and practical exercises, you will learn to build predictive models and query materials databases. This course is designed for students, researchers, and engineers in materials science, chemistry, or data science who are new to informatics. No prior experience with machine learning is required, though a basic understanding of materials science concepts is helpful. Begin your journey into the future of materials discovery today.