In 2005, Carolina physicist Jianping Lu noticed that his 5-year-old son was having trouble breathing. He took him to a local doctor, who ordered a CT scan to see what might be happening inside the boy’s lungs. The resulting picture wasn’t clear enough for the doctor to give them a diagnosis, and because they’d discussed a potential — and risky — surgery to fix the problem, Lu got a second opinion. “The second CT scan was slightly better,” he remembers. “The doctor said maybe we should wait a couple years, and he may grow out of it.” Luckily, that’s exactly what happened, and his son’s condition improved. But the experience showed Lu why the research he was doing at the time with UNC-Chapel Hill materials scientist Otto Zhou was so important.