California

Berkeley Lab’s Materials Project facilitates the discovery of useful new materials using automation and machine learning. Accessed over a million times daily, the open-access database helps companies like Toyota, Microsoft, and Samsung dramatically reduce the time and cost of bringing new materials to market. A partnership with California-based Google brought a decade of Materials Project data to Google’s artificial intelligence researchers to develop a machine learning tool to predict new crystalline structures. The collaboration added nearly 400,000 new compounds to the growing database of new materials with potential for use across industries.

Agricultural wastes from growing and processing crops in the North San Joaquin Valley may be the perfect materials needed to make new bio-based products, materials, and fuels. Berkeley Lab co-leads a project with UC Berkeley and BEAM Circular, alongside partners at UC Merced, UC Agriculture and National Resources, the Almond Board of California, and USDA Albany Agricultural Research Station, to build a publicly accessible database to guide farmers and community leaders in the North San Joaquin Valley in building up a resilient bioeconomy. 

Approximately 40 percent of the U.S. water supply comes from underground aquifers but much of it is too salty for many human uses. A new technology, developed by the LA-based company Active Membranes with funding from the National Alliance for Water Innovation led by Berkeley Lab, equips membranes used in the reverse-osmosis desalination process with electrical conductivity. This improves the membrane’s ability to separate salts and other contaminants from brackish, hard-to-treat groundwater, and could significantly help expand the country’s supply of freshwater.