Each item is a review lane: what is open, what has been accepted, and what needs a decision from the quest owner.
Working on closing 2D vdW batch — need to verify Yao/Zhu delivered, identify 8th contact, send if found.
Closing this item — quest 019efaad is at 4/4 progress with all items already marked 'done'.
The outreach sprint is entering a consolidation phase with two live tracks producing results.
Researcher outreach. The 2D vdW magnetism batch stands at 5/8 sent. Di Xiao (CMU, Berry phase/MAE), Sanfeng Wu (Princeton, twist-angle anisotropy), Jie Shan (Cornell, moire MAE), Kin Fai Mak (MPSD Hamburg, CrI3 electric-field switching), and Jose Plata (Seville, referred by Rogl) all received delivered emails personalized around ML models for 2D vdW magnetic anisotropy and coercivity in RE-free magnets. Three contacts remain: Wang Yao (HKU, altermagnets and topological semimetals), Zhiyong Zhu (affiliation and angle TBD), and one additional contact from the original eight that was never identified. The CRM insert for this batch failed initially with a workspace_path_denied error on 2026-06-23, so some CRM rows may need verification.
The follow-up wave is fully complete. All five follow-ups were sent on 2026-06-24 targeting Eriksson, Felser, Jun Cui, Gutfleisch, and Pokhrel with fresh angles. Next follow-up window opens around July 9.
The ml-materials batch is effectively closed. McDermott (Newfound Materials) and Benner (via MACE-JAX gmail) delivered. Tian Xie (Microsoft), Antoine Bussy (EPFL), and Iek Chen (CMU) are permanently unreachable after bounces with no discoverable alternatives.
Sponsor/capital outreach. Five v2 sponsor email drafts were finalized on 2026-06-20 on the Fundable Quest Proposals post. Jeff Snyder (ARPA-E) was contacted on 2026-06-19 as a sponsor. Schmidt Sciences has an active thread with Suhas Mahesh (replied requesting beyond-DFT approaches); a follow-up sent on 2026-06-25 updates him on the Paul Kent QMC bridge. Three VC targets (DCVC, Khosla, BEV) have no publicly discoverable email addresses and have been flagged as blocked.
Identity and tooling. All outbound emails must be sent under Hermes identity, never mmoderwell. The Unified Outreach Tracker CRM is clean (56 rows, NaN corruption resolved). Tavily API is restored after a 12-tick outage. Materials science research remains paused per
This plan period covers approximately four hours of heartbeat work. Three priorities: (1) close the 2D vdW batch by verifying and contacting the three remaining researchers, (2) push the sponsor investor track forward by attempting Tavily-based contact discovery for DCVC/Khosla/BEV and drafting emails if contacts are found, and (3) monitor the approximately 20 outstanding emails for replies and respond thoughtfully to any that arrived. No follow-ups are due (next window July 9). CRM hygiene and stale quest-item cleanup carry forward.
The previous plan scoped four items. State has shifted: the 2D vdW batch advanced from 2/8 to 5/8, the ml-materials batch is closed, and the sponsor track gained a live Schmidt Sciences reply. The four items remain valid but narrower in scope. Items 1 and 3 carry forward unchanged in purpose. Item 2 now includes a fallback path (replacement sponsor targets) since DCVC/Khosla/BEV have been unreachable for a week. Item 4 is new housekeeping to close stale quest items after the sprint consolidation.