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To maximize your scientific career, it is essential to establish research networks and build upon a multitude of mentoring relationships. At the heart of these networks, each scientist has the potential to benefit from the influence and satisfaction of being a mentor and a mentee.

The process of applying for a faculty position requires considerable preparation and thought. Seeking the advice and support of mentors will help during this rigorous and hopefully rewarding experience.

European accelerator-based X-ray facilities came together in 2017 in a consortium that will use their combined expertise to accelerate discoveries, secure funding and guide policy. A year and a half later, the chair of the consortium Helmut Dosch reflects on the ambition and opportunities of this type of cooperation.

Materials research is poised to play a pivotal role in addressing the grand challenges faced by society, from engineering better medicines to providing accessible clean water and renewable energy. However, complex problems require diverse teams. Therefore, there is an urgent need to address the diversity gap in materials science and engineering, especially for women.

Intelligent design of materials for biomedical applications involves the development of technologies that are informed by an understanding of biological systems. Immunoengineers have been making essential inroads in developing therapeutics endowed with designed biofunctionality, particularly in vaccinology, cancer immunotherapy and immune tolerance.

X-ray tomography is revolutionizing battery research and development by enabling non-destructive, 3D imaging of the inside of battery cells before, during and after operation.

X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) are revolutionizing our ability to measure and understand the behaviour of complex materials. A new generation of XFELs is imminent, offering new approaches to materials characterization.

An intergovernmental research facility in Jordan — SESAME — opened its doors in 2017 to researchers from the neighbouring region. A year later, the first experiments by users are revealing how the possibilities for scientific research in the region have increased, bringing the promise for rapid development and the initiation of new collaborations.

To protect our cultural heritage, it is essential that we understand the material properties of artefacts. Detailed information can be obtained on complex and often highly degraded materials using synchrotron X-ray analysis, aiding our ability to design effective stabilization and remediation strategies.

‘Push-button’ or fully automated manufacturing would enable the production of robots with zero intervention from human hands. Realizing this utopia requires a fundamental shift from a sequential (design–materials–manufacturing) to a concurrent design methodology.

The field of soft wearable robotics offers the opportunity to wear robots like clothes to assist the movement of specific body parts or to endow the body with functionalities. Collaborative efforts of materials, apparel and robotics science have already led to the development of wearable technologies for physical therapy. Optimizing the human–robot system by human-in-the-loop approaches will pave the way for personalized soft wearable robots for a variety of applications.

Soft robots promise solutions for a wide range of applications that cannot be achieved with traditional, rigid-component robots. A key challenge is the creation of robotic structures that can vary their stiffness at will, for example, by using antagonistic actuators, to optimize their interaction with the environment and be able to exert high forces.

Soft small robots offer the opportunity to non-invasively access human tissue to perform medical operations and deliver drugs; however, challenges in materials design, biocompatibility and function control remain to be overcome for soft robots to reach the clinic.

The growing demands of quantum materials, engineering and technology make access to microkelvin temperatures ever more essential. Experience in Europe suggests that new working methods, encouraged by an imaginative funding atmosphere, can accelerate progress in this frontier field.

Auxetic materials deform in an unusual way when stretched or compressed; they are flexible and adaptable, and, if made from responsive materials, can react to their environment. This Comment explores the opportunities they offer for innovative applications in fashion, design and architecture.

Wood has great potential as a building material, because it is strong and lightweight, environmentally friendly and can be used in prefabricated buildings. However, only changes in building codes will make wood competitive with steel and concrete.

The first race involving molecular ‘cars’ stimulated technical advances in scanning tunnelling microscopy and provided insights in surface science and synthetic chemistry — it also attracted wide interest from the public.

Multiferroics can be used to address fundamental questions on the nature of the universe, providing a platform to test concepts in cosmology and high-energy physics, such as the formation of cosmic strings and the existence of an electron electric dipole moment.

The commercialization of graphene-based products is challenging, because many engineering and economical aspects have to be taken into consideration. A stronger collaboration between academia and industry would be beneficial for accelerating the process.

Adoption of graphene and other 2D crystals in biomedicine is challenging — some guidelines to facilitate this process and avoid inflated expectations should be considered.