What do the Apple watch and the Raptor engine of the SpaceX Starship have in common?
Answer: Both are made, in part, from advanced materials developed over only a few years — as opposed to the usual decades — with the help of computers in a field pioneered at MIT. Now eight MIT professors — including one of the inventors of the field, known as computational materials design — aim to make the field even more powerful, thanks to a five-year $7.2 million grant from the Office of Naval Research.