In the 2,000 or so years since the Roman Empire employed a naturally occurring form of cement to build a vast system of concrete aqueducts and other large edifices, researchers have analyzed the molecular structure of natural materials and created entirely new building materials such as steel, which has a well-documented crystalline structure at the atomic scale.
"A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a
person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as
possible" - Freeman Dyson