Introduction to Materials Informatics

Catalog description

The proposed course has 5 modules. In the first module, the concepts of materials informatics are presented through spreadsheet software (e.g., Microsoft Excel) to enable the students practice with the content in a familiar environment. In the second module, computer programming is introduced (e.g., Python) and students learn to replicate tasks from Module 1 using this new tool. In the third module, various flavors of regression are introduced to model materials data, with special emphasis on ways that materials data is different from other data domains. In the fourth module, students learn to access publicly available materials data such as from published literature and online databases using simple APIs. In the final module, the concepts are linked to design and analysis of materials experiments including factorial design of experiments, outlier detection, and hypothesis testing. The overall intention is to provide students with basic skills in analyzing, modeling, and visualizing materials data using a programming language in preparation for the subsequent MATSE 419 : Computational Materials Science and Engineering.