Nathalie Katsonis is contributing to the 2013 Emerging Investigators issue of Chemical Communications with a paper entitled “Time-programmed helix inversion in phototunable liquid crystals”, by Sarah-Jane Aßhoff, Supitchaya Iamsaard, Alessandro Bosco, Jeroen Cornelissen, Ben Feringa and Nathalie Katsonis. This special issue is meant as “a celebration of the work of some of the world’s best early-career scientists”.