Among the researchers honoured this year by the National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) is Dr. Pierre Villars director of the company Material Phases Data System (MPDS) in Switzerland for his ground-breaking works in the field of “data-driven materials research and data infrastructure”. The NIMS award is presented every year since 2007 to researchers who made vital contributions to the furthering of materials sciences.

Dr. Villars advocated the concept of a database that organically links crystal structures, phase diagrams and properties of inorganic materials, and developed the “Pauling File”, a high quality and comprehensive inorganic materials database, which is worldwide the largest of its kind. The Pauling File was started in 1995 through the cooperation of MPDS and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and was copyrighted by NIMS in 2016. As of July 2019, the database records about 335’000 crystal structures, 44’000 state diagrams and 400’000 properties.

In his award acceptance speech, Dr. Villars said that his motivation lies in “demonstrating the beauties of natures through the beauties of materials data”, which would be enabled by taking a holistic approach on the fundamentals of materials science. The extensive collection of fundamental materials data by the Pauling File up until October was extracted from 180’000 documents published in over 1’000 scientific journals from the year 1900 onwards. 

Apart from further collecting materials data, future efforts will include the extension from single-phase data to multiphase data, which would be especially interesting for engineers.

This year’s NIMS Award was given to Dr. Villars and Prof. Gerbrand Ceder from the USA. The award ceremony took place during NIMS WEEK 2019 on October 30th at the Tokyo International Forum.

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