Materials in a digitalized world

We hope to lead you on a gripping journey through the world of research and innovation; you may be surprised at how broad the term «applied research» is defined at Empa. Last year, two talks at Empa in particular got me thinking about societal and technological developments. Firstly, Gerd Folkers, President of the Swiss Science and Innovation Council, pointed out that the number of researchers and their currency, the number of publications, has multiplied in recent years and that, in many areas, research has moved away from purely fundamental questions and towards economically exploitable knowledge. What does this mean for our scientists' They should always focus on the goal of any research: to push the boundaries of knowledge. They will only succeed if they are given enough leeway for creative thinking and analysis, and if they do not allow themselves to be seduced, by the globalized competition, into sprucing up their résumés with 'hyped-up' publications. Then there was Alessandro Curioni, Director of the IBM Research Center in Rüschlikon, who showcased the latest developments in cognitive computing, i.e., computer systems that, like our brains, are capable of gathering, evaluating and learning from unstructured data, and of supplying it in a summarized or even processed form. For instance, it is possible to develop new alloys that can be optimized by combining different classes of materials.