Topic: materials

This meeting examines how brain-inspired hardware could reduce AI’s growing energy requirements. Researchers connect materials and memory devices with circuits, systems and applications, including sparse computation and compute-in-memory architectures that reduce data movement. Two discussion days address fundamental advances and challenges; the final day considers translation and wider impacts. Programme participants include Steve Furber, Judith Driscoll and Tony Kenyon. The meeting takes place at The Royal Society, 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG, or online, on 23–25 November 202

Synthesize organic and organometallic compounds for materials used in extreme environments. The project connects precursor chemistry with ceramic and carbon composites, including conventional and additive manufacturing, at the Chemical Sciences Division and Manufacturing Demonstration Facility. Applications are made on the employer’s recruitment portal; no closing date is stated.

Collaborative research links businesses and research organisations to develop improved products, services and processes in Attica. Priority areas include materials, life sciences, health and pharmaceuticals, and digital technologies. Submissions run from 6 October 2026 to 28 January 2027 at 15:00.

Conduct theoretical and computational research on equilibrium and nonequilibrium many-body quantum systems, with applications across condensed matter, materials, chemistry and quantum information. Fellows develop concepts, algorithms and open-source software, publish findings, participate in collaborative activities and mentor students. The initial appointment is generally two years, renewable for a third based on performance, with an anticipated start between late August and late November 2027. The position is based at the foundation’s New York City offices; annual full-time compensation is $

Humans are very good at visually recognizing materials and inferring their properties. Without touching surfaces, we can usually tell what they would feel like, and we enjoy vivid visual intuitions about how they typically behave. This is impressive because the retinal image that the visual system receives as input is the result of complex interactions between many physical processes. Somehow the brain has to disentangle these different factors. I will present some recent work in which we show that an unsupervised neural network trained on images of surfaces spontaneously learns to disentangle

Anja Røyne discusses chemical elements, the materials around us and questions about the availability of natural resources. Conversation in Norwegian.