E-Mail IMAGE: The above diagram shows part of the molecular assembly process from individually trapped atoms to ground state molecule using optical tweezers (lasers). view more Credit: Photo courtesy of the Ni group In 2018, Kang-Kuen Ni and her lab earned the cover of Science with an impressive feat: They took two individual atoms, a sodium and a cesium, and forged them into a single dipolar molecule, sodium cesium. Sodium and cesium normally ignore each other in the wild; but in the Ni lab's carefully calibrated vacuum chamber, she and her team captured each atom using lasers and then forced them to react, a capability that gifted scientists with a new method to study one of the most basic and ubiquitous processes on Earth: the formation of a chemical bond. With Ni's invention, scientists could not only discover more about our chemical underpinnings, they could start creating bespoke molecules for novel uses like qubits for quantum computers.