I write these words just weeks after assuming the role of Chair of the National Academy of Engineering governing Council, succeeding Erroll Davis. On behalf of the entire Academy, I express both our thanks to him for his selfless service and our sincere best wishes for his future health and ...

With this issue we welcome two people to the work of the National Academy of Engineering. Tsu-Jae King Liu became the president of the NAE on July 1, 2025. Dr. Liu previously served as dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Admiral James O. Ellis Jr. USN ...

Advanced materials are key to societal development and have been at the center of technological advances since the Stone Age. They are critical to national and economic security, human well-being, and impact diverse sectors including energy, communications, transportation, housing, healthcare, ...

A decade of the Materials Genome Initiative:
insights gained and the transformative potential
of AI and automation.

New materials are the foundation of each generation’s ability to enhance prosperity and ensure security. To remain competitive globally, materials research and development ...

Our future depends on making our materials
faster, better, and smarter.

In our pursuit of economic, societal, and defense security through technology, let us not forget that everything is made of something. There is a common saying paraphrased from the writings of the Nobel Laureate Sir George ...

Self-driving labs promise to turn the Materials Genome Initiative’s bold vision into reality.

The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), launched in 2011, set a national goal to discover, manufacture, and deploy new materials at twice the speed and half the cost of the status quo (MGI n.d.). ...

Self-driving labs are the innovation leading
to accelerated discovery.

Introduction

Autonomous Experimentation (AE), also known as Self-Driving Labs (SDLs), promises to speed materials synthesis research and development (R&D) by orders of magnitude, revolutionizing the research process. AE ...

From human intuition to machine intelligence:
the next frontier in microscopy.

Introduction: Our Material Future

Materials are the bedrock of economy and foundation for all real-world technologies. The viability of space travel, grid energy storage, solar to fuels conversion, methane removal, ...

Where AI meets chemistry: accelerating
materials innovation.

The ability to conduct empirical experiments or process optimization guided by the scientific method (hypothesis-driven) is the driving force behind advances in science and engineering. Experiments that test theories and simulations ...

From minerals to machine learning: shaping the next generation of batteries.

Energy storage with batteries has become an integral part of our daily life, ranging from portable electronics, such as cellphones and laptops, to electric vehicles (EVs). They have the potential to transform grid ...

RONALD LATANISION: I’d like to welcome everyone back to the National Academies’ Bridge interview series. Today we’re joined by Ainissa Ramirez, a writer and science communicator with a background in materials science and engineering. Also here is Kyle Gipson, editor of The Bridge.

A brush with death sharpens our focus. When the Supreme Court forced TikTok to choose between sale and silence, 170 million Americans glimpsed the loss of a dopamine-driven feed powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) moving billions in commerce. That fragility reminds us that a world built on ...