Open Efforts for Computational Materials Research & Education: A NSDL MatDL & TMS Pilot working together with the Materials community

该项目正在通过与主要的国际专业材料学会矿物、金属和材料学会(TMS)合作，扩大现有NSDL MatDL路径的活动，为可持续地免费访问材料社区的权威计算材料研究和教育资源奠定基础。通过协调补充服务，MatDL和TMS正在支持开源计算材料软件的扩展和部署，以支持材料研究人员和教育工作者。特别是，两个开源计算材料研究代码项目FiPy和OpenThermo正在进行改造，以便纳入适合本科生使用的增强教育模块。普渡大学、RPI大学和德克萨斯A&AMM大学的本科课程正在进行初步测试和评估。这些示范模块的传播将在2009年2月TMS年会、2009年10月材料科学与技术会议和2010年2月TMS年会的特别参与者圆桌会议上进行。这个项目的智力价值在于它促进了开源研究代码，并将这些代码转化为当前的、令人信服的本科生学习资源。为本科生和教职员工提供现实的计算材料工具，使学生能够发展必要的计算材料技能，并帮助教职员工将计算方法更全面地融入他们的课程中。该项目的更广泛影响首先落在材料、本科教师和学生的主要目标受众上。但这些计算材料教育模块也广泛适用于STEM学习社区。因此，为本科生提供基于研究的相关、共享学习资源的便利访问有望对材料科学和相关学科的教与学产生积极影响。

This project is expanding the activities of the existing NSDL MatDL Pathway through collaboration with the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS), a major international professional materials society, to lay the foundation for sustainable free access to authoritative computational materials research and education resources in the materials community. By coordinating complementary services, MatDL and TMS are supporting the extension and deployment of open source computational materials software in support of materials researchers and educators. In particular two open source computational materials research code projects, FiPy and OpenThermo, are being transformed for incorporation into enhanced educational modules suitable for use with undergraduates. Initial testing and evaluation is taking place in undergraduate courses at Purdue, RPI, and Texas A&M. Dissemination of these exemplary modules is taking place at special participant Roundtables of the February 2009 TMS Annual Meeting, October 2009 Materials Science and Technology Meeting, and the February 2010 TMS Annual Meeting. The intellectual merit of this project lies in its promotion of open source research codes and the transformation of these codes into current, compelling learning resources for undergraduates. Providing undergraduate students and faculty with realistic computational materials tools enables the students to develop the necessary skills in computational materials and helps faculty to incorporate computational methods more fully into their coursework. The project's broader impact falls first on the principal target audience of materials undergraduate faculty and students. But these computational materials education modules are also broadly applicable across the STEM learning community. Thus offering the undergraduate community convenient access to relevant, shared learning resources based on research promises to have a positive impact on both teaching and learning within materials science and cognate disciplines.