MaterialsZone to fast track scientific research by unlocking unpublished data on the blockchain

MaterialsZone has secured $1m investment to further develop its proprietary technologies that will allow scientific researchers to publish their data on the blockchain. The seed investment into MaterialsZone is from Sarona Ventures, who have been behind popular hi-tech startups and business accelerator programmes.

It is estimated that 95% of scientific research is inaccessible or lost. This is due to fears surrounding intellectual property, little incentive for researchers to publish their data and a lack of platforms upon which scientists can publish it. Therefore, under the current publishing and academic models, most researchers are reluctant to share their data, out of fear of their findings getting scooped by other researchers. This creates an insurmountable barrier for science to shift into an open access approach, which results in billions of data entries, studies, and experiments from all research fields, not being shared, obstructing innovation and scientific breakthroughs.

Israel-based MaterialsZone addresses these issues through its community-driven platform, which allows researchers to share and sell their data. The platform creates an open scientific data marketplace, incentivising laboratories and scientists worldwide to collaborate in the field of materials science. MaterialsZone utilises blockchain technology to manage data transactions, protecting data from being altered, while keeping ownership (IP) in the hands of its creators, without one central entity controlling the database.

The platform facilitates the cooperation between teams and consortia around the world – anytime and in any place, by automatically collecting data from ongoing studies as well as loading historical data into the database. The platform also allows the sharing of failed results data, which will stop researchers pouring time and money into experiments that have been tried elsewhere.

MaterialsZone’s recent efforts has raised $1 million in a seed round from Sarona Ventures, which will help develop its platform on a global scale. MaterialsZone has further harnessed an extensive database that houses novel materials data gathered from leading laboratories worldwide.

MaterialsZone is the result of seven years of R&D at the Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA) in Bar Ilan University (BIU) in Israel, in a lab led by Dr. Assaf Anderson and Prof. Arie Zaban, currently the President of BIU. MatersialsZone was founded by Dr. Assaf Anderson, CEO, and Barak Sela, Chief Architect. Dr. Anderson commented on the news:

“Thousands of materials labs around the world rely on rigid patent systems and scientific publications that allow labs to share only a small part of their data. Therefore, around 95% of data goes unpublished due to strains and complexities faced by researchers. Materials science is the most important driving force behind innovation, and unlocking this data in order to accelerate the discovery of new materials is the key to new technologies and solutions.

“We are excited about our recent collaboration with Sarona Ventures, which will further develop the MaterialsZone database and platform that will lead to new solutions and save thousands of experiments worldwide.”

Philippe Bouaziz, founder and chairman of Sarona Ventures, added:

“The vision of MaterialsZone combines revolution in materials science, along with blockchain technology, in which we see one of the most promising areas in the coming years.

“Our investment in MaterialsZone is an expression of our policy to foster innovation on the technology forefront, including the use of the most advanced technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI).”