Viewpoint in 2023

Incorporating in the curriculum active learning and project-based teaching, assuming minimal prior knowledge and emphasizing the real-world relevance of the covered topics result in better learning outcomes and help engage a more diverse group of students. In this Viewpoint, five educators who have been involved in reimagining undergraduate teaching in materials science and engineering share their insights and perspective.

Deaf scientists who use American Sign Language need to be able to communicate specialized concepts with ease. In this Viewpoint, four deaf scientists — a quantum physicist, a marine ecologist, an immunologist and an organic chemist — discuss their experiences in developing scientific lexicons and the resulting shift in their science communication.

Exascale computers — supercomputers that can perform 10¹⁸ floating point operations per second — started coming online in 2022: in the United States, Frontier launched as the first public exascale supercomputer and Aurora is due to open soon; OceanLight and Tianhe-3 are operational in China; and JUPITER is due to launch in 2023 in Europe. Supercomputers offer unprecedented opportunities for modelling complex materials. In this Viewpoint, five researchers working on different types of materials discuss the most promising directions in computational materials science.

Solution-processable semiconductors based on small molecules, polymers or halide perovskites combine sustainable manufacturing with exceptional optoelectronic properties that can be chemically tailored to achieve flexible and highly efficient optoelectronic and photonic devices. A new exciting research direction is the study of the influence of chirality on light–matter interactions in these soft materials and its exploitation for the simultaneous control of charge, spin and light. In this Viewpoint, researchers working on different types of chiral semiconductors discuss the most interesting directions in this rapidly expanding field.