Materials and Processes Research and the Information Highway: Summary Record of a Workshop (1996)

This is a report on the Workshop on Materials and Processes Research and the Information Highway, which was held at Stanford University on April 12 and 13, 1996. It was conducted by the Committee on Materials and Processes Research and the Information Highway, which was convened by the National Materials Advisory Board of the National Research Council. The workshop was requested and sponsored by the Defense Reliance Technology Panel for Advanced Materials. The report consists of summaries of the presentations given during the workshop, including the presentations summarizing discussion group deliberations. The summaries have been reviewed for completeness and accuracy by the presenters. The views expressed herein represent those of the workshop participants and do not represent the judgments of the committee.

The overall objective of the workshop was to collect information pertinent to the use of the information highway (i.e., the Internet and the World Wide Web) in materials research. The specific objectives were to:

• identify the priority needs of materials and process researchers, focusing on those that could be addressed by information technologies

• describe relevant capabilities of the information highway, including its elements and their limitations, and projected improvements

• review existing applications of the information highway in materials research and related fields for lessons learned in terms of benefits realized, barriers and pitfalls, and application implementation strategies

• identify potential opportunities and key issues in expanding the use of the information highway by materials researchers

The committee met on December 7 and 8, 1995, to design the workshop and identify potential participants. The objectives were reviewed and workshop content developed to address each. In its analysis of the priority needs of the materials and processes community, the committee identified four major areas:

• access to comrehensive information resources, such as databases on materials properties and processes

• use of the Internet to improve research collaboration and as a way of locating technical expertise

• better ways of sharing experimental and computational resources through the Internet

• use of the Internet for the continuing education of researchers

The objective of describing the capabilities of the information highway was covered by identifying Internet tools which would facilitate use of the highway by researchers. In addressing the objective to review existing applications, the committee planned presentations and demonstrations that would describe past and

current work on Internet applications. The final objective of identifying potentially beneficial application opportunities and key issues would be met from the results of the workshop. A complete workshop agenda is given in appendix B.

The participants selected for the workshop included members of the materials and processes research community, experts in Internet applications, and developers of tools to facilitate Internet use by researchers. The names of the 53 participants and their affiliations are shown in appendix A. The organizations represented are summarized below.

Department of Defense

Office of Naval Research

Advanced Research Projects Agency

Army Research Office

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Naval Research Laboratories

National Institute of Standards and Technology

ASM International

Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society

Federation of Materials Societies

American Physical Society

Materials Research Society

American Vacuum Society

Sandia National Laboratories

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory