[1] The MGI partially references the Human Genome Project, but only conceptually, and is a broader and less targeted effort.
The name "materials genome" was coined in December 2002 by Dr. Zi-Kui Liu who incorporated the company MaterialsGenome, Inc. in Pennsylvania, USA,[2] and filed the trademark protection on March 5, 2004 (78512752).
In 2005, Zi-Kui Liu and Pierre Villars jointly crafted a proposal on "Materials Genome Foundation" when they met in Switzerland.
In 2008, United States Automotive Materials Partnership (USAMP) supported by the United States Department of Energy funded a smaller version of the concept of "Materials Genome Foundation", which resulted in the development of the software package ESPEI.
[8] In May 2017, progress on the Materials Genome Initiative was reviewed in 2017 at a workshop sponsored by NSF and future directions were identified.