What does a materials scientist actually do, day in, day out? Well, they deal with methods for producing novel materials and exploring their (hopefully promising) properties. So far, so good. For some time now, however, materials science has increasingly been taking place in silico – that is, using high-performance computers. Data science, computer simulations, machine learning and AI have thus opened up numerous new possibilities.

For instance, in the area of Advanced Manufacturing (AM), the focus of the current issue: The aim here is to understand these new, advanced manufacturing processes such as 3D printing down to the very last detail, i.e. so well that one can simulate them – and thus eventually vary and adapt them. Only then can AM be successfully put into practice, as Pierangelo Gröning, member of Empa's Directorate, explains in an interview.

3D printing also plays a crucial role in another project that involves making the virtual worlds of the metaverse tangible – with the help of a Virtual Reality (VR) glove, tailor-made and largely automated.

Empa researchers are also developing an app called "Your Virtual Cold Chain Assistant" to avoid food waste, using a self-learning algorithm to save around a quarter of heating energy, and modeling our atmosphere to track down problems such as climate change or urban air pollution.