Innovation has been the key to many challenging problems over the years, especially in the age of evolving industry landscapes. As companies in materials science and technology are moving data from labs into informatics systems, a digital platform that can bring experts from different scientific areas and physical locations together virtually to collaborate becomes a critical part of the modern R&D process. Recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact worldwide have made this demand more evident than ever before.
A web-based, collaborative enterprise informatics platform will be introduced and demonstrated how it can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of materials discovery and design. Besides its flexibility in storing and managing a wide range of data in materials applications, the platform, LiveDesign, also provides comprehensive cheminformatics analysis tools, bringing together experimental data searching, computational modeling, and advanced machine learning technology all in one place. With tools like automatically updated search, customizable form view and cover pages, it also provides convenient ways to manage large scale projects, creating reports and presentation contents on the same platform where data resides. It has demonstrated success in helping partners design new materials and processes through the combination of human expert knowledge, scientific simulation, machine learning and intuitive idea-capturing UI. A materials informatics platform like LiveDesign can provide long-term value and reduce overall cost in the long and demanding process of innovation.