MaterialsCommons is bringing Europe's materials data together

Materials research and engineering in Europe is currently constrained by a highly fragmented data landscape. Critical information is distributed across multiple repositories, platforms, and publications, often with limited standardisation or machine-readable structure. This makes it difficult to search, connect, and reuse data across disciplines, slowing down innovation at a time when data-driven and AI-enabled approaches are becoming essential for materials development.

Against this backdrop, the MaterialsCommons project is working to create a first-ever connected European infrastructure that brings together existing digital resources into a single, interoperable entry point for materials data, workflows, and tools. By enabling seamless access, integration, and reuse of high-quality datasets, the project aims to significantly accelerate research and industrial innovation in the field. It is in this context that we spoke to Professor Peter Gumbsch, Institute Leader at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM, to explore how this vision can be translated into practice, and what MaterialsCommons could mean for the future of materials development in Europe.

“MaterialsCommons provides materials scientists and engineers with a unified, secure, and reliable platform to discover and access materials information.”
Prof. Peter Gumbsch

In simple terms, what is MaterialsCommons and what problem does it solve? Why is finding materials data in Europe still so difficult today?

The materials research and innovation landscape is highly fragmented, with data published across numerous journals and online repositories. Much of this data is not sufficiently annotated to enable automatic integration or combination with other datasets. While several platforms (e.g. Materials Cloud, NOMAD, MaterialDigital, DIADEM, CAPeX) have been established in recent years to address this challenge, they often operate in isolation, requiring researchers to query multiple systems separately. As a result, finding and integrating data remains time-consuming and complex.

MaterialsCommons will bring together shared digital resources, including data and workflow tools, into a connected European infrastructure accessible through a single entry point. By linking relevant resources, it will enable faster and more efficient materials and component development. The aim is to make materials data easier to find, access, and reuse for both academic research and industrial applications.

Can you give a concrete example of a situation where MaterialsCommons would make a real difference for a researcher or engineer today?

An engineer developing a new steel component today typically relies on averaged data from previous products and supplier specifications, followed by extensive testing to validate performance. MaterialsCommons will streamline this process by providing access to richer and more comprehensive datasets, complemented by automated surrogate models that capture process–structure–property relationships. By starting from higher-quality, better-connected data, engineers will be able to develop improved solutions more quickly.

The project promises to accelerate materials development. How will it help and how will you measure progress?

Today, materials science data is often poorly documented, non-machine-readable, and difficult to integrate, which limits AI-driven innovation.

MaterialsCommons addresses this through three main pillars:

• Establishing a semantic foundation with shared taxonomies, metadata standards, and ontologies accessible through common schemas
• Improving access to a broad range of materials data to support better-informed decisions early in the development process
• Developing more automated, interconnected, and interoperable workflows for experiments and simulations

We have defined clear targets for the infrastructure. First, we aim to build a prototype capable of handling 10 000 queries per day, integrating over 90% of widely used data sources and repositories. This will require interoperable workflows and dataspace technologies, supported by semantic standards and workflow management systems already adopted within the European materials community.

The results will be demonstrated through six use cases, which will validate and showcase the infrastructure’s benefits. Ultimately, we aim to enable fully automated workflows and reduce materials development time by a factor of around four.

MaterialsCommons will also apply a user-centred design approach developed with industrial and academic partners to ensure long-term usability and relevance.

You have already presented MaterialsCommons at DPP4EU, the Digital Product Passport community. What is the link between research infrastructure and something as concrete as product passports?

MaterialsCommons will make materials and process data interoperable and machine-readable, aligned with FAIR principles and compliant with the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation.

The project will enable data sharing and traceability across the value chain, allowing materials-related information required for Digital Product Passports (DPPs) to be directly assembled from underlying datasets. In this vision, DPP-relevant information can be seamlessly drawn from diverse sources and combined with lifecycle and circularity data to support sustainability requirements. By connecting to EU and industrial data-space initiatives (e.g. GAIA-X, IDSA), MaterialsCommons will enable broader data exchange beyond the immediate requirements of DPPs.

MaterialsCommons brings together 26 research institutions and over 30 industrial partners across 14 countries. What does it take to make a consortium of this scale work?

The ideas and collaborations behind MaterialsCommons have been developing over many years. Rather than building a platform from scratch, the project connects existing and established infrastructures such as Materials Cloud, NOMAD, MaterialDigital, CAPeX, and initiatives like OPTIMADE. The leaders of these platforms are involved as Principal Investigators in the consortium.

The work is structured into three technical domains: semantic interoperability, dataspace technologies, and workflows.

These domains are developed using agile approaches, with progress continuously validated through concrete use cases. Industrial partners play a central role in defining requirements and ensuring that the solutions meet real-world needs, while also benefiting from early access to the emerging infrastructure.

You recently had your kick-off meeting. Were there any interesting observations or learnings?

MaterialsCommons is designed as a prototype digital materials infrastructure, which makes it distinct from typical research projects.

At the kick-off meeting, what stood out most was the partners’ forward-looking perspective. There was a strong focus on building a sustainable infrastructure that extends beyond the project lifetime, rather than concentrating solely on the four-year timeframe.

Equally notable was the level of collaboration across the consortium, with active exchange between work packages, use cases, and partners. This reflects a strong sense of shared ownership and commitment to the overall vision.

How do you expect the project to develop and mature over its four years?

Over four years, we will develop a European federated digital infrastructure and strengthen the feedback loop between industry and academic research through six use cases. This will provide researchers with access to FAIR data and computational tools for advanced materials innovation, while supporting experimentalists in integrating multi-tier experimental and computational workflows.

These workflows will contribute to a framework for self-driving labs, combining AI and machine learning to increase experimental throughput and shorten design-to-validation cycles.

We trust MaterialsCommons will become a leading platform for materials research services and a primary access point for data for close to 100 000 active researchers and engineers in Europe. Our ambition is for its data structures and vocabularies to become a reference standard for industrial applications, and for the platform to rank among the leading global resources for materials data, tools, and workflows.

Horizon Europe funding made this project possible. What does EU support enable that would simply not happen otherwise?

Horizon Europe funding is essential for a project of this scope, as materials data is highly fragmented across Europe. This challenge has been identified in several strategic reports, including the AMI2030 Strategic Materials Agenda, which called for interconnected infrastructures with a single access point.

MaterialsCommons implements this vision by creating a unified entry point for researchers in both academia and industry to access European materials data resources.

This will lower barriers to entry, accelerate data discovery, and enable AI-driven workflows across institutional boundaries. It also creates opportunities for broad participation from partners across Europe, ensuring representation of diverse national and sectoral perspectives.

MaterialsCommons is built to last beyond the project. How are you ensuring the infrastructure remains active and grows after 2030?

Sustainability is being addressed from the outset through discussions on governance structures, including the potential creation of a MaterialsCommons Foundation.

Over the course of the project, MaterialsCommons is expected to transition from prototype stage into a MaterialsCommons Foundation (MCF) with a formal legal and operational framework to sustain outputs beyond the project lifetime. The MCF will support standards developed during the project and coordinate contributions from partners.

A broader MaterialsCommons Organisation (MCO), structured as a non-profit, is also being developed to support long-term platform operation and evolution. This will ensure continuity, maturity, and scalability beyond the initial funding period.

What is the one result you most want to be able to point to at the end of the project?

A demonstrated acceleration of materials and component development processes by up to a factor of 10 in the use cases.

This is important because it would demonstrate semantic interoperability across organisational and disciplinary boundaries, scalable workflows that integrate multiple systems, and the effective combination of simulation, experimental data, and machine learning in a unified framework.