Welcome to the inaugural issue of the NSF DMREF newsletter, a new way to share news, research highlights, resources, and community updates from the Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future program.

NSF DMREF brings together researchers working across materials science, engineering, chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, data science, and related fields. Across these projects, teams are using an integrated approach that combines theory, computation, data, artificial intelligence, experimental synthesis, and advanced characterization to accelerate the discovery and development of new materials.

“Since 2012, the NSF DMREF program has been accelerating solutions to America’s most challenging materials problems,” says John Schlueter, NSF DMREF Program Director. The goal is not only to understand materials more deeply, but also to help move promising materials toward real-world use more efficiently.

“A key feature of the NSF DMREF program is its effective communication through sharing of knowledge and digital outputs,” says Schlueter. “Over the past decade NSF DMREF has facilitated this through the biannual PI Meeting and more recently through the creation of DMREF.org. Today, we are commencing the publication of a quarterly newsletter that will further enhance interactions across the NSF DMREF community and highlight your progress for the public.”

This newsletter will highlight the breadth of the NSF DMREF community: new awards, research results, open software and data resources, workforce development activities, and stories from teams across the country and around the world. Future issues will feature project spotlights, trainee and team updates, research highlights, and opportunities for collaboration.

In this issue, we introduce you to the newest cohort of projects; spotlight one NSF DMREF team’s ongoing efforts to identify a cleaner way to recover critical metals; feature some key NSF DMREF software and data resources, and more.