“Ask Georgia Tech researchers working with advanced materials for examples, and they give a pop culture reference. Two of them even cite the same reference. “It’s like The Terminator, liquid metal that then becomes a solid,” says Alberto Fernandez-Nieves, associate professor in the School of Physics. “Think of The Terminator,” says another School of Physics associate professor, Jennifer Curtis. Pop culture so effectively appropriates next-level science research, that it comes as no surprise that these scientists first thought of Oscar-winning director James Cameron’s shapeshifting “mimetic polyalloy” assassin from the future in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. “Or that animated movie, Big Hero 6,” Curtis adds, referring to a 2014 Disney film about nanobots combining to form bigger objects. “We would love to find an original way to create small shapes. And then make them intelligent enough to properly reconfigure in some other way.” Georgia Tech scientists aim to make those science-fiction scenarios real through collaborative, interdisciplinary research at the Center for the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials and Interfaces (STAMI).”
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