Moore's Law states that the number of active components on an microchip doubles every 18 months. Variants of this Law can be applied to many measures of computer performance, such as memory and hard disk capacity, and to reductions in the cost of computations. Remarkably, Moore's Law has applied for over 50 years during which time computer speeds have increased by a factor of more than 1 billion! This remarkable rise of computational power has affected all of our lives in profound ways, through the widespread usage of computers, the internet and portable electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Unfortunately, Moore's Law is not a fundamental law of nature, and sustaining this extraordinary rate of progress requires continuous hard work and investment in new technologies most of which relate to advances in our understanding and ability to control the properties of materials. Computer software plays an important role in enhancing computational performance and in many cases it has been found that for every factor of 10 increase in computational performance achieved by faster hardware, improved software has further increased computational performance by a factor of 100. Furthermore, improved software is also essential for extending the range of physical properties and processes which can be studied computationally. Our EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Computational Methods for Materials Science aims to provide training in numerical methods and modern software development techniques so that the students in the CDT are capable of developing innovative new software which can be used, for instance, to help design new materials and understand the complex processes that occur in materials. The UK, and in particular Cambridge, has been a pioneer in both software and hardware since the earliest programmable computers, and through this strategic investment we aim to ensure that this lead is sustained well into the future.

CORNET is an ambitious project that develop a unique EU Open Innovation Environment (OIE), that cover the triangle of manufacturing, modelling and experimentation for the optimization the Organic/Large Area Electronic (OE) nanomaterials, materials behavior and nano-devices (OPVs, PPVs, OLEDs) manufacturing of R2R printing & gas transport (OVPD) processes, to validate materials models based on experimentation and fabricate tailored OE devices and systems for demonstration to industrial applications (e.g. automotive, greenhouses). CORNET will develop a sustainable OIE Platform and OIE Database for documentation of citable & industrially accepted protocols for OE material and device characterization, modelling and manufacturing. CORNET strategy will establish strong links and clustering with existing EU clusters (as EMMC, EMCC, EPPN), end-user & industrial associations, and EU networks to increase the speed of OE materials/device development and industry uptake, maximize the acceptance of the OIE and push-through standards for adoption by industry worldwide. The CORNET main objectives are to: 1. Develop an effective OIE with world-class experts in Manufacturing, Multiscale Characterization & Modelling, connected to EU clusters, and create a reliable database with citable protocols with contribution to Standards 2. Multiscale Characterization & Modelling to Optimize OE nanomaterials and devices fabrication and Models Validation 3. Optimize the nano-device Manufacturing of OPVs, PPVs, OLEDs by Printing (R2R, S2S) and OVPD Processes 4. Fabricate Tailored Devices, Systems and Demonstrate to industrial applications (e.g. automotive, greenhouses) CORNET has developed a strategic plan for the clustering activities with more than 800 existing related bodies, a Business Plan for the continuation of the OIE beyond the project and the Innovation Management, IPR and legal support services to protect generated foreground and to enable its adoption by the EU research & industrial communities.

The aim of the EMMC-CSA is to establish current and forward looking complementary activities necessary to bring the field of materials modelling closer to the demands of manufacturers (both small and large enterprises) in Europe. The ultimate goal is that materials modelling and simulation will become an integral part of product life cycle management in European industry, thereby making a strong contribution to enhance innovation and competitiveness on a global level. Based on intensive efforts in the past two years within the European Materials Modelling Council (EMMC) which included numerous consultation and networking actions with representatives of all stakeholders including Modellers, Software Owners, Translators and Manufacturers in Europe, the EMMC identified and proposed a set of underpinning and enabling actions to increase the industrial exploitation of materials modelling in Europe EMMC-CSA will pursue the following overarching objectives in order to establish and strengthen the underpinning foundations of materials modelling in Europe and bridge the gap between academic innovation and industrial application: 1. Enhance the interaction and collaboration between all stakeholders engaged in different types of materials modelling, including modellers, software owners, translators and manufacturers. 2. Facilitate integrated materials modelling in Europe building on strong and coherent foundations. 3. Coordinate and support actors and mechanisms that enable rapid transfer of materials modelling from academic innovation to the end users and potential beneficiaries in industry. 4. Achieve greater awareness and uptake of materials modelling in industry, in particular SMEs. 5. Elaborate Roadmaps that (i) identify major obstacles to widening the use of materials modelling in European industry and (ii) elaborate strategies to overcome them. This EMMC-CSA stems directly out of the actions of the EMMC and will continue and build upon its existing activities.

The MarketPlace consortium will utilise state of the art information technologies to build an open web-based integrated Materials Modelling and Collaboration platform that acts as one-stop-shop and open Marketplace for providing all determining components that need to be interwoven for successful and accelerated deployment of materials modelling in industry. This includs linking various activities and databases on models, information on simulation tools, communities, expertise exchange, course and training materials, lectures, seminars and tutorials. The proposed MarketPlace will be a central-hub for all materials modelling related activities in Europe and provide tangible tools to connect disparate modelling, translators, and manufacturing communities to provide a vibrant collaboration web-based tool for the advancement of materials modelling in European manufacturing industry. The developed platform will include mechanisms for the integration of interoperable set of advanced materials model workflows for coupling and linking of various discrete (electronic, atomistic, mesoscopic) and continuum models. This will be achieved by developing open and standard post and pre-processing methods that allow complex flow of information from one model to another for both strongly and loosely coupled systems. The Marketplace platform will include access to concerted set of federated databases of materials models, materials data and provide for access to experimental characterisation and stimulate the development of interface wrappers and open simulation platforms. The MarketPlace consortium aims to strengthen the competitiveness and lower the innovation barrier for European industry for product development and process design and optimization using materials modelling.

MUSICODE is an ambitious project which addresses the H2020 Call DT-NMBP-11-2020 “Open Innovation Platform for Materials Modelling” that will develop a novel Open Innovation Materials Modelling Platform to enable the Organic and Large Area Electronics Industry (OLAE) to expediate accurate and knowledgeable business decisions on materials design and processing for optimization of the efficiency and quality of OLAE device manufacture. This platform will integrate: (a) Material, process and device modelling with workflows spanning the micro-, meso- and macro- scales, validated by expert academic and industry partners. (b) Integrated data management and modelling framework with ontology-based semantic interoperability between scales, solvers, data and workflows, with industry-accepted material and process modelling parameters and protocols, employing graphical user interface tools for workflow design, analysis, optimization and decision making. (c) Plug-ins to Materials Modelling Marketplaces, Open Translation Environment, Business Decision Support Systems, etc. and to High Performance Computing infrastructures for workflow execution. The platform will demonstrate industry user case workflows to optimize OLAE materials selection & design as well as printing and gas-phase manufacturing. The MUSICODE Business Plan will ensure the platform sustainability, exploitation and industrial adoption beyond the project, with the ambition to become the central Open Innovation Hub for the OLAE industry and evolve as the central paradigm for cross-domain applications.