Materials for Energy & Sustainability
IGlobal Materials Frontiers Forum: Discovery, Innovation and Impact
Defining the next 50 years of materials science and engineering — in discovery, performance, applications, and circularity.
Aim:
Rising materials demand, critical-resource constraints and the need for viable substitutes and circular material flows are reshaping the future of materials science. At the same time, advances in AI, autonomous discovery, computation and characterization are opening new possibilities. What should the field prioritize over the next ten, twenty and thirty years?
This invitation-only Forum brings together a small group of leading thinkers across disciplines, sectors and regions. Brief, forward-looking talks will open substantive discussions on unresolved questions, theories yet to be formulated, capabilities still to be developed and applications yet to be realized. An informal setting and the Chatham House Rule
will encourage candid exchange.
Participants will shape a concise Materials Futures Agenda, identifying transformative research questions, essential capabilities and opportunities for international collaboration. A working draft will be circulated for their input before finalisation.
Topical tracks:
DISCOVERING AND DESIGNING MATERIALS
- AI, Computation & Autonomous Discovery: Integrating theory, data, robotics and synthesis to accelerate materials discovery and validation.
- Materials in Action: Next-generation characterization across scales, operando measurements and predictive understanding of interfaces, defects and degradation.
MATERIALS FOR SOCIETAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION
- Energy, Climate & Environmental Resilience: Materials for energy conversion and storage, clean fuels, carbon management, water technologies and adaptation to a changing climate.
- Emerging Functions & Extreme Performance: Quantum, electronic, photonic and multifunctional materials; architectures for demanding thermal, mechanical, chemical and radiation environments.
- Living Interfaces & Human Health: Biointegrated, bioinspired and adaptive materials for diagnostics, therapeutics, regeneration and human–technology interfaces.
RESOURCE-RESILIENT AND CIRCULAR MATERIALS SYSTEMS
- Critical Resources & Strategic Substitution: Materials criticality, supply resilience, resource-efficient design and alternatives to scarce or geographically concentrated feedstocks.
- Circularity by Design: Durability, repair, reuse, disassembly and recovery; secondary feedstocks and life-cycle-informed design within planetary boundaries.
- Sustainable Manufacturing & Industrial Translatio
Documentation
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Laboratory of Reactions and Process Engineering (LRGP), Nancy, France
guo-hua.hu@univ-lorraine.frInstitute of Inorganic and Materials Chemistry, Greinstraße 6, D-50939 Cologne, Germany
sanjay.mathur@uni-koeln.de