The ability to design materials has long accentuated the development of technology and infrastructure. The ever-increasing spectrum of functionalities required for materials fundamental to modern civilization requires efficient paradigms for materials discovery. These paradigms must go beyond current serendipitous discoveries and classical synthesis-characterization-theory approaches. To bridge these complex issues will require integrated and direct feedback from multi-scale functional measurements to theory and must allow real-time and archival experimental data to be incorporated effectively. The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) approach in the US and similar approaches internationally seek to accomplish this integration and transform the way materials research is conducted. As a result, in recent years great strides have been made toward combining computational, experimental and data science into a single integrated workflow, creating the framework for accelerating materials innovations. However, many challenges remain. For instance, high-throughput experimental techniques could provide great opportunities for accelerating materials validation but have been infrequently applied in MGI workflows. Further, gaps exist between the conditions under which materials are synthesized and characterized in a lab setting and their environment in applications. Alternatively, theoretical models are now routinely performed at atomistic levels and at the continuum level, but effective “scale bridging” techniques generalizable to multiple materials problems are lacking. Moreover, a disconnect remains between the theoretical and experimental communities hindering wide-spread effective interactions and knowledge transfer between the groups. Finally, there is a lack of effective generalizable data mining tools available to turn existing data into actionable knowledge. This symposium will bring together established experts and newcomers from academia, national laboratories, and industry to present the latest advances and discuss pressing challenges facing the MGI.