1. A process for providing a rapid approach to the rational development of scalable high-performance materials, the process comprising: a high-throughput data generation cycle for rapidly generating informative data in a high-throughput mode for virtual and experimental evaluation of new materials; a knowledge generation cycle that uses input from existing experimental data, correlations generated from experimental, theoretical, and/or modeling findings, theoretical and modeling investigations and the combination thereof in order to generate: (i) working hypotheses and (ii) suggested steps for experimental and/or theoretical investigations to guide the search for better materials; a knowledge repository for storing the data generated by the high-throughput data generation cycle and for storing the knowledge generated by the knowledge generation cycle and its database content; and a software/hardware platform that integrates the high-throughput data generation cycle with the knowledge generation cycle: