This is our annual Emerging Technologies issue, in which we feature news items, articles and profiles of some of our industry’s newest and most innovative research. Out of curiosity, I did a Google search on the topic and came across an article on the world’s top 10 emerging technologies for 2014. The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies publishes this annual list to highlight recent key trends in technological change. The Council aims to raise awareness of the potential of these technologies and help to close gaps in investment, regulation and public understanding. For 2014, the Council identified the following 10 new technologies that could reshape our society in the future:

• Body-adapted wearable electronics,
• Nanostructured carbon composites,
• Mining metals from desalination brine,
• Grid-scale electricity storage,
• Nanowire lithium-ion batteries,
• Screenless display,
• Human microbiome therapeutics,
• RNA-based therapeutics,
• Quantified self (predictive analytics), and
• Brain-computer interfaces.

I am always excited to learn about the creative new ways that researchers are studying the world around us. You can read more about these projects at www.forumblog.org.

We feature some amazing emerging technologies within the coatings industry in this issue, including noise-abatement coatings, self-healing smart beads that detect and repair corrosion, glare-dimming coatings inspired by moth eyeballs, and ultrathin coatings called nanosheets that can cling to the body’s most difficult-to-protect contours and keep bacteria at bay, just to name a few.

 I hope you enjoy reading through the issue and discovering what’s emerging in our industry!