Supratik Guha

SGuhalrSupratik Guha
Director of Physical Science, IBM Research
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Yorktown Heights, New York

Supratik Guha is presently the Director of Physical Sciences at IBM Research, where he has been since 1995. During his time at IBM he initiated and led the high dielectric constant (high-k) oxide materials research at IBM and was responsible for some of the key materials and processes that led to IBM’s high-k metal gate CMOS technology. His current research interests are in new semiconductors and oxides for logic, and energy conversion applications. Supratik received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Southern California in 1991, and his B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (India) in 1985. He is also currently an adjunct professor of materials science at Columbia University. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society.

 

Abstract

BIG DATA OPPORTUNITIES IN MATERIALS SCIENCE

Supratik Guha
Physical Sciences, IBM Research, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
e-mail: guha@us.ibm.com

Big Data and Analytics intend to change our approach to materials science and particularly, the area of materials discovery. Beyond the traditional methods for predicting materials properties based upon physics principles and using increasingly powerful computers, there is emerging interest in the automated digital gathering, storing, sifting, and correlation of existing data from conventional and non-conventional sources, to then help make inferences for the design of new materials. A large number of theoretical and computational predictions need to be balanced by an appropriately scaled approach of synthesizing and measuring new materials experimentally, in order to have a realistic “materials informatics” system. Whether such an approach can be a practical one for something as quirky as materials design and discovery remains to be seen. I will offer some of my thoughts, particularly from the point of view of semiconducting and electronic materials, and also from the point of view of a “customer” as to what needs to happen for all of this to be useful to the practicing materials engineer.