Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
With industrial research increasingly under pressure to produce rapid profits, and universities rightly concerned with primary research, can university spin-off companies fill the gap between invention and commercialization?
Richard Friend has co-founded two companies based on his work on organic electronics whilst maintainting a thriving research career at Cambridge University. Nature Materials talked to him about combining business with academia.
High standards in scientific education and research should not be the privilege of those who can afford to attend prestigious universities. Physicists in Trieste are trying to remedy the isolation of scholars from developing countries and involve them in the worldwide scientific community.
The realization of metamaterials with a negative index of refraction has created great opportunities for novel applications. John Pendry talks to Nature Materials about his key contributions to the field and his passion for physics.
Recent advances have brought negative index materials and their fascinating properties from their theoretical origins into the domain of experimental physics and device engineering.