The use of origami-folding principles to design new functional materials and structural elements in civil engineering was the focus of one recent CEE perspective paper written by Course 1 graduate student Talal Al-Mulla ‘13 and Department Head Markus Buehler. Commenting on the work of Cornell physicist Jesse Silverberg, the article published in Nature Materials highlights the opportunity of using hierarchical schemes to fold two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, analogously to paper origami. According to Al-Mulla and Buehler, Silverberg’s approach suggests elaborate nanomaterial structures and, with computer-aided engineering design, indicates a method of creating reconfigurable structures for applications in civil engineering. Read the paper, circulated in the April 2015 edition of Nature Materials.