The German-Canadian Materials Acceleration Centre in partnership with the Acceleration Consortium, is hosting a technical workshop on Friday, August 14, 2025 at the University of Toronto. This workshop aims to provide researchers with exposure to data management and AI topics including metadata standards for multi-scale materials design to device integration processes, and large language models (LLM) for early-stage decision-making, and more.  

The first part of the workshop will focus on the integration of existing data management infrastructure at Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) with the semi-automated Electronic Lab Notebook at Fraunhofer ISC (ISC). Both capabilities have been widely tested and validated individually for various use case, including but not limited, to collect, connect and orchestrate meta-data in self-driving labs (SDLs). 

This second part of the workshop will explore how large language models (LLMs) can assist researchers in parsing scientific literature, lab notebooks, expert instructions, and technical documents to extract scientific information, including synthesis recipes, materials properties, device configurations, data processing approaches, and modeling methods. These capabilities can support early-stage decision-making, aid in the design of experiments, and provide warm starts for optimization processes.

The workshop will be facilitated by Dr. Matthias Popp (Fraunhofer ISC), Dr. Kourosh Malek (FZJ), and Dr. Shayan Mousavi Masouleh (NRC) and is open to anyone interested in attending. Register your interest in participating in-person here! – https://forms.gle/FXaYqgTgozzuMJQt5