Professor Franz-Josef Ulm made a connection between the patterns of houses and streets in an aerial photo of city and the underlying molecular structure of concrete. This observation led to research tying together the seemingly disparate disciplines of physics and urban planning. “Ultimately, I believe there’s potential for this to become a new field of study. It also could lead to new tools for architects and city planners,” says Ulm, the George Macomber Professor, in the current issue of MIT Spectrvm.