Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is committing another $36 million to its Accelerated Materials Design and Discovery (AMDD) collaborative university research program over the next four years. In early 2017, TRI announced the formation of AMDD and launched the program with the mission of using AI to find new materials for emissions free mobility.

The total scope of the initial investment was $35 million over four years with multiple university partners. The new funding builds on that initial investment and will bring closer collaboration with program partners.

Our focus on collaboration is what makes our research program unique. Rather than acting strictly as a funding source, TRI has formed deep collaborations with researchers which have led to joint publications as well as co-developed open-source data and software. This collaborative approach is critical to accelerate the development of new materials for battery and fuel cell vehicles as no single entity can do this alone.

—Brian Storey, Director of TRI’s AMDD program

Over the last four years, TRI’s AMDD program has published more than 150 academic papers that have advanced the understanding of battery and fuel cell materials. Key research topics for the program include accelerating the testing of battery lifetime, developing methods for the AI-driven discovery of new fuel cell materials, creating a novel robotic platform for rapid design of new polymer formulations for batteries, and launching autonomous systems that can discover materials in simulation with no human intervention.

In addition to publications, the research program has led to multiple open-source software packages and some of the largest open data sets for batteries.

Over the next four years, TRI will focus more strongly on creating new research tools, methodologies, and capabilities to accelerate the commercialization of these advanced materials. The participating institutions include:

• California Institute of Technology,
• Carnegie Mellon University,
• Cornell University,
• Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems
• Georgia Institute of Technology,
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
• Northwestern University,
• SLAC National Accelerator Lab,
• Stanford University, and
• University of Michigan.