NanoCommons ontology expert Egon Willighagen (Maastricht University) and Éva Valsami-Jones (University of Birmingham, NSC Coordinator) attended the workshop organised by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation and the European Materials Modelling Council to kick-start a bottom-up group of experts interested in “materials informatics” more particular ontologies. The workshop aimed to find experts who are interested in working on elaborating the EMMO (European Materials Modelling Ontology) to cover characterisation and materials processing. The goal in the long run is to build and find wide-spread agreement on an ontology that can be the basis of access and interoperability in the materials domain.
The one-day workshop was attended by 73 experts from 15 countries, covering all aspects of materials research (modelling, academia, industry, philosophers, experimentalists etc.) and the input offered contained information on 21 existing taxonomies and 11 existing ontologies for the following domains:
- Cheminformatics
- Nano-safety and toxicology experts
- Characterisation
- Chemical reactions
- Biomass
- Energy management
- Design and manufacturing
- Decision support
- Text mining
- Market Place operations
The workshop provided a unique and probably first-ever opportunity for experts from such a wide range of backgrounds, but sharing a common interest in materials and ontologies, to get together. The first possibility to meet again will be the Interoperability workshop in Freiburg on 6-7 November.
