Last weekend I attended the New England Workshop on the Mechanics of Materials and Structures NEW.Mech, held at Northeastern University in Boston. Markus Buehler from MIT gave an exciting presentation about engineering materials from a molecular level to their macroscopic applications and how both experiments and simulations can be employed to achieve this goal. Furthermore Eitan Grinspun from Columbia University spoke about how simulations and computer graphics can help us to solve real-life problems, such as design of clothes (movie). I think this work is very interesting because it makes it possible for humans and machines to work together on optimization problems, creating a very efficient approach. Finally, Harvard professor Mahadevan discussed the origin of collective behavior in bird flocks or termite populations by using both experiments and simulations. Similar collective behavior can be observed in my work on MNA topology optimization.