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Light beam refracting through a crystal sample on an optical bench in a materials lab

Case study · Government · materials science

PRIMED: fast materials-data search for U.S. Department of Energy researchers

PRIMED, a search and indexing platform that lets scientists share materials data and find materials by recorded and projected properties — in seconds.

MLtwist U.S. Department of Energy

$198K

DOE SBIR award

Delivered

The challenge

Materials scientists generate measurements across labs and instruments, while computational models project properties for materials nobody has measured yet. Finding a candidate material meant digging through papers, spreadsheets and siloed datasets — with no way to search what has been measured and what has been predicted together.

What we built

We built PRIMED (Preparation & Requisition of Integrated Microscopy + Energy Data): a shared platform where scientists publish their materials data, findings and measurements, with an indexing and search layer fast enough to explore interactively.

Every material is indexed on both recorded measurements and projected, model-predicted properties, so a single query spans both. A scientist looking for a material that refracts specific wavelengths of light and also withstands a given temperature can ask for exactly that.

Multi-property, range-based queries across optical, thermal and other properties return ranked candidates in seconds. Axio led an augmented engineering team working alongside MLtwist to design and ship it.

Scope

  • Shared repository for materials data, findings and measurements
  • High-speed indexing of recorded and projected properties
  • Multi-property, range-based search (e.g. optical + thermal)
  • Ranked candidate results for interactive exploration
  • Publishing workflow so scientists can share new datasets
  • Augmented engineering team working with MLtwist

The result

Researchers can find candidate materials by the properties they need — measured or projected — instead of by the paper they happened to read. PRIMED was funded through MLtwist’s $198,834 U.S. Department of Energy SBIR award.

Axio engineered the platform MLtwist runs on — how we manage projects and people, run labeling, and launch custom pipelines on Kubernetes. It’s the foundation we delivered our TSA and Department of Energy work on. They build like owners, and they ship.

David Smith, Founder & CEO of MLtwist

David Smith

Founder & CEO, MLtwist