The large quantity of nanomaterial-focused research and production has created a vast and growing body of nanomaterial-centric data. Yet, critical knowledge gaps in nanotechnology need to be addressed so that the use of nanomaterials is not outpacing the understanding of their implications. The Nanomaterial Registry is a data-driven tool aimed at enabling researchers to close this knowledge gap. As researchers interact with the information in this central data repository, knowledge will be extracted and used to guide new research and, ultimately, the safe use of nanomaterials. Importantly, the Nanomaterial Registry Portal is available at nanoHUB to enable predictive modeling of nanomaterials using Registry data. We envision the further growth of the Registry by engaging nanomaterial scientists in the direct submission of their data as well as working with publishers of scientific journals to employ automated text mining of publications to extract relevant nanomaterial data.

Alex Tropsha, PhD., is an expert in the fields of computational drug discovery, cheminformatics, computational toxicology, structural bioinformatics, materials informatics and nanoinformatics with the emphasis on methodology development and experimentally testable hypothesis generation. His studies have had major impact in the area of computational drug discovery where his group has employed cheminformatics approaches such as QSAR modeling to discover novel bioactive compounds. In recent studies his group has begun to develop novel approaches for the analysis of compound mixtures as well as develop and employ methodologies for the analysis of compounds acting at multiple receptors. In addition, his group developed new approaches for visualization of chemical libraries and databases of materials in high-dimensional feature space. Since 2013, Dr. Tropsha is a principal consultant for the Nanomaterial Registry (https://www.nanomaterialregistry.org/), a major NIH-supported and highly curated resource that archives research data on nanomaterials and their biological and environmental implications.

Network for Computational Nanotechnology

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Alexander Tropsha (2016), "Nanomaterial Registry: present and future," https://nanohub.org/resources/22753.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. material properties
2. materials science
3. Nanomaterial Registry
4. nanomaterials