NASA NTRS2011
It would be hard to argue against the fact that Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) is a fast growing discipline within material science and engineering. A quick scan of the proceedings from conferences such as Aeromat, Material Science and Technology, and the TMS Annual Meeting clearly shows it. What began a few years ago as one symposium has grown into multiple ICME related symposia at each of these conferences. As encouraging as the number of symposia being offered is the attendance at the symposia. For example, one of the ICME symposia at MS&T 10, the symposium in which this book is based, had five sessions which culminated in a panel discussion that was standing room only. In addition to the large, annual materials science and engineering conferences, smaller 1 to 2-day conferences/workshops sponsored by government agencies (e.g. AFRL and NIST) on specific aspects of ICME and by universities promoting their ICME work are regularly offered. And arguably the most significant news with regards to ICME and conferences is the July 2011 First World Congress on ICME. This five day TMS sponsored conference, specifically focused on ICME with an international advisory board of ICME leaders, shows how far ICME has spread across the globe. Evidence for the growth of ICME can also be found in Academia. The University Materials Council (UMC) is composed of department heads for material science and engineering from major U.S. and Canadian universities. Meeting twice a year to share best practices in order to strengthen both the engineering content [1] and the educational process, the UMC s agenda for their Spring 2010 meeting was dedicated to ICME [2]. This meeting was held in response to the growing awareness that the universities play a major role in the success of ICME and therefore need to develop ICME curriculum in order to meet that need. To aid educators in the development of ICME courses, NSF is funding a "Summer School" on ICME to be held at the University of Michigan in 2011 [3]. Northwestern University recently announced a MS Certificate Program in ICME [4]. Course work for this certificate begins in the Fall of 2011. Other signs that ICME is growing comes from the formation of ICME initiatives from work that did not start off with ICME in mind. One of the committees in ASM International is the Materials Properties Database Committee (MPDC). In the 2010 meeting of the MPDC, based on a study by ASM, the committee decided that it would create an ICME sub-committee in order to determine how ASM can meet the growing needs of the ICME community [5]. In 1999, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) created a consortium, the Metals Affordability Initiative (MAI), with members from both industry and government with a goal of reducing the cost and time to market of producing metal parts for aerospace applications [6].