Materials become design, design becomes function

Once things you could hold in your hand, materials have become more design ideas than entities, and the designs themselves are transforming into operational activity.

If you are at all concerned about job security, materials are the answer. Ever-growing in sophistication and complexity, new materials bring a fresh need for engineering. Even advances in existing materials now demand new engineering.

The materials scene is definitely changing. For most of history, materials were things you could hold in your hand, mostly cold, hard things. Today's challenge is that materials are becoming something you hold in your mind-and when that gets too tough, your computer models hold them in silicon memory.