MaterialVital-Digital: MaterialVital-Digital: Digitized materials research for biohybrid and living materials—semantic standards, electronic lab notebooks, and open data platforms for the biohybrid materials communities.

MVD is, alongside MatConnect, the second accompanying research project for the “Biohybrids and Living Material Systems” module. The overview under Partners & Network.

Research on Engineered Living Materials (ELM) and biohybrid materials generates large amounts of valuable data—spanning many disciplines, laboratories, and formats. Without common standards, this data remains difficult to find and virtually impossible to reuse. MVD bridges this gap: By digitizing the entire research and development chain, data from different disciplines becomes understandable, discoverable, and reusable (FAIR principles)—the foundation for faster, innovative product development processes.

MVD does not support research processes from a distance, but rather works closely with researchers on-site from the very beginning—and develops data standards in collaboration with the communities, rather than for them. To ensure that the tools and workflows are actually used, there is a particular focus on making them easy for researchers to use, as well as on training and outreach.

This creates a robust digital infrastructure for the ELM and biohybrid communities: data becomes reusable, results are more easily comparable, and the development path from research to product is significantly shorter.