Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) is the primary program by which NSF supports the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI). MGI recognizes the importance of materials science and engineering to the well-being and advancement of society and aims to "deploy advanced materials at least twice as fast as possible today, at a fraction of the cost." The MGI approach seeks to seamlessly integrate computation, experiment, and data to predict and control materials properties and to enable manufacturing of high-performance materials at low cost, thus fueling the successful discovery of new materials and their rapid deployment and incorporation into manufactured products and devices.DMREF will drive the integration of experiment, theory, computation, data analytics, and artificial intelligence, as well as the development of new tools, processing approaches, and infrastructure to achieve its objective.

MGI highlights three sets of goals: 1) Unify the Materials Innovation Infrastructure (MII), a framework of integrating advanced modeling, computational and experimental tools, and quantitative data; 2) Harness the power of materials data; and 3) Educate, train, and connect the materials research and development workforce.

NSF Full Proposal Deadline: February 4, 2025

Link to FOA Here: NSF Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) 

PI Eligibility:  Individuals with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research as a Principal Investigator (PI) are invited to work with their organizations to develop an application. Individuals from underrepresented groups as well as individuals with disabilities are always encouraged to apply. All DMREF proposals must involve at least two Senior/Key Personnel (PI, Co-PI, Faculty or Other Senior/Key Personnel) to ensure that all aspects of the project (synthesis / growth / processing, characterization / testing, theory / data / computation / simulation) are adequately covered by relevant expertise. These partnerships may occur through either a proposal from a single institution or one involving multiple institutions.

Institutional Limit: Institutions are limited to five (5) proposals. 

Application Information: Interested PIs must submit a concept paper summarizing their proposed research project (350 word limit, PDF format). Applications not adhering to this requirement will be returned without review.

Merit Review Criteria: Summaries will be reviewed based on the criteria detailed in the solicitation.