Inside E-MRS World - Vol. 3 / No. 4 - March 2025
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Thoughts from E-MRS
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I have written in a previous edition of this Newsletter about how important it is to appreciate that science is a global endeavour and to build solid links with the international research community. E-MRS has a long history of both supporting European materials researchers and working with partner societies across the globe to raise the profile of materials research, which underpins so much of human technological development.
I am delighted to report on some of our recent and upcoming activities on the international stage. We recently signed our first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the African Materials Research Society and look forward to closer ties and joint activities with our colleagues across Africa. We continue to collaborate closely with sister societies including the Mexican, Brazilian, Japanese, Indian and Chinese materials research societies, and will shortly be signing a renewed MoU with the Korean MRS. Our relationship with the US MRS continues to be strong: for example, we co-sponsor the annual Erice Summer School in Materials for early career researchers.
In other developments, we recently signed an MoU with the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) in Raw Materials, marking an important collaboration between E-MRS, which traditionally concentrates on functional and nanomaterials, and a European institution focusing on the supply of raw materials into Europe’s industry supply chain. As we all start to think more about the sustainability and environmental footprint of the materials and devices that we develop (witness the increase in the number of E-MRS symposia dealing with such topics), this partnership will only become more valuable. Similarly, we have been working closely with the Federation of European Materials Societies (FEMS) on several joint initiatives of common interest.
On this latter point, we recently co-organised a workshop at the European Commission in Brussels on AI in materials discovery and materials discovery for AI. This proved to be extremely timely, given recent events in the world of AI. A range of speakers reported on the latest developments in materials discovery using AI, and highlighted issues that need urgent attention, including the need for such work to be driven by materials scientists rather than only AI experts, and how the ever-increasing energy demands of large-scale AI systems is causing a crisis that new materials and devices for advanced computing can help solve. The Commission has requested further consultation on this and is planning a follow-up workshop in early 2026. Watch this space.
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